A Drop in the Ocean
by Chewing Gum
Summary: Sequel to “What Words Fail Of”. A seaside holiday turns into a case when the local ghost legend comes to life and Holmes is determined to lay the myth to rest. But does this have anything to do with the disappearances of Whitehall agents? Collab with KCS.
1. Dealing with Children

_"The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent." - Mel Lazarus_

**Watson**

My dearest friend Sherlock Holmes and I had just finished an extremely taxing case involving a blackmailer and a fraud involving yarn. It had drained him both physically and mentally, and one would expect him to be lounging on our settee, perhaps easing his sleep with his current drug of choice, entirely out of touch with reality. Instead, he was in the aquarium section of the London Zoo, pulling faces at the sharks. I had learned over the last several months that parenthood could be an amazing thing.

His drug use still occurred, but it had become less and less frequent since Mycroft had told him in plain terms that if Eve ever saw him under the influence, he'd strangle his little brother with his bare hands.

The little girl herself was beside him, sticking out her tongue at a huge hammerhead with the boldness only a child had. She was six now, it being July and her first year of school having ended three days beforehand. It was amazing to see how she had grown from a withdrawn, sullen, starving creature to a as normal of a child as one could expect her to be, not only from her experiences but from being under the guardianship of the three of us.

She really was a pretty little creature (though what guardian of a daughter would say otherwise?) when one overlooked the scars crisscrossing her poor body, most of which were covered. Once she got sufficient iron in her bloodstream and a touch of sun, her natural complexion revealed itself to be olive-toned. Trevor, who had been scanning family trees to help me draw up a medical history for her, confirmed that her mother had been the daughter of a Greek aristocrat and a Scottish landowner. Energetic from the same nourishment and sunlight, she was a different being entirely than the broken creature we found in the carnival tent.

On the outside, she was a little lady like thousands of other daughters of doctors, businessmen, and high-ranking government officials (surely Holmes was in some way a businessman). Beneath the lace beat a tough little heart, however, that urged her to run about with the Irregulars when permitted to, beg to accompany the two of us on the most trivial trips of a case, and be delighted in the early lessons of fencing and baritsu that Holmes provided against the strong wishes of his brother.

She was small for her age, she still experienced night terrors every so often, and she had quite a list of relentless phobias, but as I watched Holmes boost her up to get a better look at some revolting creature with several rows of teeth, I could not help but think we had done as good a job as anyone else.

Hyde's term in the asylum was cut short by death. It was never fully determined if it was by attack or suicide. Jackyl and Sinclair's manservant climbs the gallows together and died a blackguard's death. Sinclair himself, of course, had died at the muzzle of a murderous dog he himself had created.

That man's predictions for Eve's future seemed less and less likely as the time passed. She was for the most part even-tempered, her roughhousing with the Irregulars (Alfie in particular) being in good humour. The girl was doing extremely well in school, and had managed to make friends despite lacking conversation in the conventional sense.

That was not to say there was not difficulties, even with the three of us and the nanny who did not live in but was always quick to arrive when needed (neither Holmes ever confirmed this, but I a feeling the woman was hired through Whitehall rather than a traditional agency). The present was a very good example; it was one of Mycroft's days off, but he was working feverishly to finish off a large project and so it was us who accompanied Eve to the zoo. Not that I minded, but she had missed his presence lately.

"Stop tapping the glass, Holmes!" I ordered, seeing that the girl was following his example.

"It's not going to break it," scoffed my friend, dropping the girl down into his arms, prompting a silent giggle from her.

"No, but a shark ramming into it might." Through his joy I saw his weariness. The case had drained him, drained both of us. Before, the three of us could hole up for days, even weeks, and simply recuperate. Now we had a little girl who needed our full attentions.

A trip to the seaside would have been a nice journey, but I had the feeling that between the Holmes brothers, I would have to settle for the aquarium.

"Come, Watson!" called out Holmes, smiling genuinely despite his fatigue, now leading Eve along by the hand. "She wants to go see the elephants! Says she wants to see if their trunks are as flexible as they look in her books."

I had not seen the girl that the small notebook and pencil she always carried out of her pocket, but with those two they always seemed to have a way of communicating that no one else could understand. Holmes may have been the least parent-like among us, but damned if Eve didn't seem to take after him the most.

That, of course, worried me greatly.  
**  
Holmes**

It turned out that the elephant was quite able with its extension, and as expected the massive creatures held her attention completely.

"I don't understand," murmured dear Watson as the girl waved about one of the carrots I had brought in my inside jacket pocket for the animals. "How she can be fearless around a huge animal like that and still be afraid of Mrs. Phenton's toy poodle down the street."

I laughed as the big-eared creature plucked the treat out of her hand like a child plucking a flower. "She lives with Mycroft. She's used to large animals."

As expected, this prompted a roll of the eyes. "You're horrible to your brother."

"It's my sworn duty. He's the smartest man in England, maybe in Europe; if I wasn't there to knock him down a peg every once in a while, who would?"

Watson sighed, regarding his pocket watch. "It's nearly closing time, Eve! Say goodbye to the elephant."

Eve gave the creature a rather solemn wave and the last of the carrots before running to catch up with us, lifting her arms up and being swept into Watson's grasp with the noiseless giggle that had become one of the loudest sounds in my life lately.

How were we to know that the elephant would not be the last exotic animal we saw that night?

Samuel Calhoun was a very prominent member of the criminal community from the time he was thirteen, when he had stabbed the ruling Scottish crime leader in his sleep, adopted the name Ferdinand Black, and began calling the shots through various mouthpieces all over his native country of Ireland. His assumed name had been the terror of all who heard it in the underground circles. That was, of course, until a young up-and-coming government employee who was every bit the prodigy and more as Black deciphered his bolthole in London and managed to guide a team through infiltrating it.

When Calhoun met Mycroft, the former had been on the muzzle end of the latter's pistol. My brother, however, knew he was more useful alive and had him hauled back to the Whitehall cells. Calhoun apparently had a lot of time to think over his actions in that cell, because when he was eventually let lose from a combination of missing evidence and plea bargaining, he swore he was a changed man.

What separated him from every other rat who scrambled unfairly out between prison bars was that he was telling the truth. He had picked Mycroft, the closest thing to a peer he had ever encountered, as a role model, misinterpreting his laziness as an amiable, easy-going lifestyle, and took it from there.

Now, he lived between Ireland and the coast of England, an honest fortune made by businesses that had practises of hiring the destitute and those with criminal records that would not be hired elsewhere. He had opened schools for underprivileged children and orphans, and had legally adopted four orphans himself at various ages (the youngest was twenty-two now and had recently graduated culinary school). In short, he was as happy a man as one could ask for, and I would not be surprised to see roses springing from his footsteps and woodland critters following him everywhere. He was the closest thing to a saint an agnostic could be, and he claimed he had Mycroft to thank for it.

I believe the only reason brother mine hadn't had him picked off is because he repaid his debt with information about inner crime circles, using his still-powerful push as the frightening Mr. Black when needed.

His visits had been more frequent since Mycroft had as well become a parent by adoption, and because of his love of exotic birds (to the point that there was almost always one perched on his shoulder), he and the girl were very fast friends.

We heard the loud Scottish accent before we even entered, and when we had entered, there was a flurry of red feathers as a particularly large parrot took flight, landing neatly on Eve's arm to her delight. It was a scarlet macaw by the name of Hermes who was well-acquainted to her.

Calhoun was in one of Mycroft's chairs, his favourite one I noted with amusement, sitting opposite my brother himself. Poor brother looked worn… No wonder, as he had been pouring his very soul into his latest project. If he was resting now, at least it meant it was over, though he was hardly in any shape for a visitor like Calhoun.

"Ha ha!" the redheaded man exclaimed, grinning widely. "Hermes hasn't forgotten you, little one! Come over here, help me convince your old father that he needs a bit of a holiday."

Eve tilted her head slightly, a motion the parrot mimicked. She and the bird might of well have been kindred souls; for reasons Calhoun, an expert in his own right on most of the parrot species, could not figure out, Hermes lacked a voice but possessed a talent for physical miming. It was hard to tell if Hermes amused Eve more or if it was the other way around.

Mycroft rubbed his brow, throwing a weary glance in our direction as if pleading for help. "He has this mad idea that our work will permit a few weeks at the seaside. I am through reasoning with him, so if you could possibly just throw him out…"

"Oh, come now, Sherlock works freelance, and the government can't be bothered to courier your work for a bit? The three of you look a quarter dead. My hotel on the most beautiful beach is finally running smoothly, I've got a suite I set aside for those I enjoy the most… Luxury rooms, beautiful scenery, a gourmet kitchen… The sea air will do you all a world of good."

"I must admit, Holmes," Watson spoke up, a failed attempt at a resisted smile on his face. "Perhaps a holiday would be a chance to unwind. Besides, we've taken Eve on daytrips but she's never really been away anywhere."

Were I more callous, I might have pointed out that Eve travelled through most of Europe, she merely didn't see much from being kept in a coffin and a darkened tent the majority of the time. "If there's a large case that comes in…"

"Let Scotland Yard bungle through it," scoffed Calhoun. "If it's too drastic, you know they'll swallow their pride and come find you." He scooped both girl and parrot up, keeping the parrot on his shoulder but plunking the child into my brother's arms. "Look this little princess in the eye and tell her you can't spare the time for a vacation, you old grump."

It was a horribly cheap shot and I suspected the man knew this. Mycroft had to be able to withstand mind games and torture as part of his career, but there was one thing that could always break his resolve and that was a pair of big brown eyes and a pouting lip.

"Don't you dare make that face," my brother warned, as he had warned me so many times over so many years. "It doesn't work in the slightest, you know."

Her only response was to blink several times before looking away, obviously wounded deep in the soul, dejection itself upon her face.

"For heaven's sake, Eve, honestly… Do you really wish to go to the seaside? It's very sandy, you know. And seaweed is highly unpleasant."

She looked to him now, hurt gone entirely, nodding enthusiastically.

"Oh, alright then. Perhaps for a short while… I suppose a little relaxation would hurt none of us."

Eve clapped her hands in delight, triggering winged Hermes to translate this as an enthusiastic clucking of the beak. She hugged her guardian tightly, arms not reaching very far around him but there was effort there.

"Yes, well…" In a year, brother mine had not entirely grown used to the more exaggerated displays of emotion that children were prone to. "Isn't it nearly time for you to be in bed, young lady?"

She nodded, kissing his cheek before scrambling from his lap and heading for the last door on the left, waving a goodbye to Hermes (returned with a swipe of an orange foot).

"That girl is going to be the death of me one day," sighed Mycroft as he watched her leave. He did not sound entirely unhappy about that fact.

"Just so you know, you never do build up resistance to those looks," Calhoun chuckled as he gathered his jacket to let himself out. "See you on the seashore, Daddies."


	2. A Cheerful Frame of Mind

_"A cheerful frame of mind, reinforced by relaxation... is the medicine that puts all ghosts of fear on the run."_

_- George Matthew Adams _

**Watson**

By the time we arrived in Worthing the following afternoon, the four of us had covered all four points of the compass in mood due to Holmes's sneaking Eve a forbidden package of sweets on the (very) long train ride. Eve was greatly appreciative; the elder Holmes was most definitely not, both with younger brother for giving the sugar to the girl and with me for not stopping him from doing so. As if I would have been able to had I been foolish enough to attempt it.

In consequence, when we reached the platform of the small village station after what seemed like hours, Eve was fairly bouncing with excitement and fructose and Holmes was sulking in a manner far more childish than the girl ever would think of adopting.

"Really, Mycroft, it's not as if she gets any sweets in your house," I heard him grouse petulantly behind me as I stepped out of the compartment.

"There is a reason for that, Sherlock," the man said with a patented eye-roll, "and it has nothing to do with my not caring for them."

"Which is?"

"That," I answered dryly, gesturing to our young charge who was darting back and forth energetically from us to the end of the platform, as if expecting to be able to see the ocean from the station. "Eve, get back here!"

Holmes's miffed attitude continued until the sight of the girl all but dragging his portly older brother down the station platform toward the waiting line of transportation caused his irritation to fade into a smirk.

"Do not encourage that child to be any more precocious than she already is, Holmes," I warned the detective as we picked up our luggage. "Your brother needs a rest as much as you do."

"And you as well, my dear Watson. Besides, what could possibly happen at the seashore to disrupt a holiday for us?"

I glared at him, and he grinned in his most infuriating manner before heading off without another word to the carriage his brother had engaged to drive us the short distance to the beach.

Percheron Hotel, as Mycroft informed us Calhoun had told him, was a luxury hotel situated directly on the beach (here Eve's dark eyes sparkled in anticipation) and surrounded by woods on the other sides, ensuring complete privacy from the outside world. The village was mostly a holiday town and so saw the most activity on weekends and the summer months.

Originally the place had been a seaside villa, owned by one Alexander Percheron, a reclusive rich man, one of whose descendents had turned the stately villa into the hotel it was today, retaining the name of the original owner.

And as we drove up the tree-shielded drive and came upon the stately establishment, I saw that it was indeed a place of residence for the wealthy, having its own set of outbuildings which appeared to be a large stables and horses, no doubt to ride along the adjacent beaches. A few other scattered outbuildings indicated other possible recreations in addition to the allure of the blue water and foaming surf evident just beyond the sandy path leading from the place to the piers and shore.

Eve's dark eyes had grown wide and round at the sight of the blue water and white sand, as well as the countless screaming seagulls that swooped overhead and perched on various objects 'round the hotel when we disembarked. No sooner had I swung her down from the carriage than she gave a silent giggle and ran straight for a group of disgustingly fat gulls perched on a stone statue in the courtyard, sending them squawking angrily to higher places of refuge around us while she stood under the feathery swarm, laughing noiselessly.

Holmes grinned, and we both went after the girl when she made a dash for another group of the poor birds, leaving Mycroft to do the checking in. When we rejoined him a moment later in the polished foyer, slightly flushed and breathless from the merry chase the sugar-energised girl had led us, the elder Holmes was speaking with a tall, dark-haired and moustached gentleman at the desk, apparently waiting on the keys to the suite Calhoun had reserved for our use.

Eve skipped lightly up to him and tugged on his arm, her little face wreathed in a smile so wide that it rather cancelled any annoying effects of the candy on the train.

At any rate, Mycroft smiled back down at her and turned to the fellow beside the desk, who was now looking rather curiously at my friend. "As I said, Mr. Sage, I am traveling with my brother Sherlock and his friend Dr. Watson. Sherlock, Doctor, this is Richard Sage. Apparently he is quite a fan of yours."

"I have read all your stories, Doctor," Sage said, his booming voice taking me aback by its filling the open foyer with a slight echo as he pumped my hand a little exuberantly and then Holmes's in turn. "Nice little things, too. Pleasure to meet you, gentlemen, and your brother."

Holmes smiled pleasantly, though the wary-of-Watson's-eccentric-readers look had started to form in the back of his eyes. Fortunately for my friend, Sage turned back to the elder Holmes, who laid a large hand on Eve's head and spoke.

"And this is my daughter, Eve. Eve, this is Mr. Sage. He will be staying here, too."

I smiled as I heard the fatherly pride carefully hidden under the bland voice as the man introduced the girl to the other gentleman. Eve smiled shyly and bobbed a slight curtsey, and Sage smiled in return.

"Lovely little girl, Mr. Holmes," he said pleasantly, though I noted with some amusement that he looked a bit puzzled, and no wonder – for the girl did not exactly resemble Mycroft.  
However, the fellow was polite enough to not push the matter, and after finally obtaining the extra key that he had apparently come down to request, he took his leave.

"One would think that such a successful, unmarried London businessman would be in the city at the moment; the seaside holds no attraction for a man so obviously engrossed in his work," Holmes remarked.

I was rather too tired to ask him to explain his deductions, and so I was rather relieved when Mycroft answered instead.

"There was a fire in his offices, Sherlock, and his business partner became ill as a result. They are vacationing here while the offices are repaired and his partner recovers his health."

Holmes scowled. "There is no possible way you could have deduced that from his appearance, Mycroft!"

"No, Sherlock," elder brother drawled, glancing with amusement at me for a moment, "which is why I asked him before you arrived. Ah, Vincent, Mr. Calhoun has everything in order for our stay, then?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Holmes, he's been expecting you," the clerk said briskly. "The suite has three lovely bedrooms overlooking the ocean, two singles and one double, off a most spacious sitting room…"

"Yes, yes," the elder Holmes waved off the rest of the enthusiastic explanation and snatched the keys from the counter with the utter abhorrence of small talk that so characterised both brothers.  
**  
Holmes**

By the time we had reached the suite, our luggage had been whisked up before us by unseen porters and left in a neat row. I watched with amusement as Eve's eyes grew round with amazement at the sight of the polished brass and gleaming wood evident around the rather lavish rooms, and even Mycroft expressed approval regarding the place. No doubt the girl had never seen such opulence before in her short life, and while Watson and I had had our share of well-off clients and their accommodations, it was always rather enjoyable to stay in such surroundings without fearing for our lives or sanities on some case or other.

I poked my head into the first two rooms (of course, ours would be the last one I looked in) and then shoved my valise into the third, tossing my cap onto one of the double beds. I saw a smirk of amusement cross my brother's face as Watson dropped his own bag inside the door as well without bothering to ask me if I was going to room with Mycroft.

I shuddered at the very thought - for one thing, my brother rose at all ungodly hours of the morning. For another, he had made it clear on more than one occasion before I had left childhood that he would rather sleep out-of-doors than with me anywhere in the near vicinity.

My friend then took Eve's luggage into her smaller bedroom and returned a moment later with the girl in tow, the latter skipping about the sitting room to look at anything and everything that caught her lively fancy.

"Shall we have luncheon sent up, or are you two going to overcome your distaste of meeting new people and go down to the hotel restaurant?" Watson asked impertinently.

"I suppose we can go down, the girl needs to walk off some energy," Mycroft grumbled, straightening his cuffs meticulously in the mirror that stood over the cherrywood table near the door.

Eve clapped her hands and bounced over to the door, dragging Watson with her, and after shooting me a tired grin he allowed her to pull him down the hall to the stairs; she had made it quite obvious on the short trip up that she had no interest in taking the small, closed lift again. The poor girl still intensely disliked enclosed places after her horrible younger experiences with the carnival.

Mycroft and I followed at a more sedate pace and joined them a few minutes later in the restaurant, a decent-looking establishment that actually was rather empty, most of the hotel's inhabitants engaged no doubt in picnics and the like along the beach this time of the afternoon. Watson and Eve were seated at a large table, chatting (at least Watson was, at any rate) with the fellow we had met at the desk, Richard Sage, and the smallish blonde chap next to him could only be the man's ailing partner.

Watson made the introductions while attempting to keep Eve's busy scribbling efforts on the notebook in front of her and not the tablecloth, and since they were already so comfortable at the table Mycroft reluctantly accepted Sage's invitation to sit there for the meal.

The fellow's companion, one Dexter Waspe, was a quiet, mild-mannered sort, extremely polite to the point of being retiring as opposed to his partner's rather brash voice and more forward manner.

"Actually I am doing rather well, Doctor, thank you for asking," Waspe replied quietly in answer to Watson's question regarding his state of health. "Sage here is prone to worry far more about me than I do about myself."

I was familiar with that kind of attention; it was both a blessing and a curse, though more the former than the latter.

"You know, Mr. Holmes," Sage began conversationally, leaning across the table toward Watson and me, "you might be interested in the local legend hereabouts, if you're as inquisitive as the Doctor says you are in those stories."

I was not certain whether that was a slight challenge to Watson's accuracy or a more direct challenge to my curiosity, but having nothing better to do I feigned interest, much to Mycroft's dismay. My brother turned his attentions away from what he regarded as a frivolous conversation to helping Eve choose what to order for luncheon.

Sage slapped a paperback volume upon the table and then leant forward eagerly, his elbows squeaking on the polished wood. "I purchased this book in the village when we arrived yesterday, gentlemen, and it told of a rather gruesome legend that supposedly haunts the surrounding area."

"Honestly, Sage, can this not wait until after we have eaten?" Waspe ventured mildly.

I was about to agree when Eve shook her head vigorously, tugging inquisitively on Sage's sleeve, her eyes glowing with excitement. Honestly, the tastes of children these days.

Watson glanced at me and I shrugged, which Sage took as permission to continue and did with great gusto.

"According to the story, an ancestor of this Percheron chap suspected his brother of causing the accidental death of one of his prized horses, and he finally murdered the brother in his suspicious anger."

Mycroft gave a sigh of disgust and hid his face in the menu while Eve scooted closer to Sage curiously.

"But that's not the most interesting part," the fellow went on, glancing from the girl back to Watson and me in his eagerness.

"What is, then?" I asked sceptically.

"The fact that this fellow then sectioned the body into pieces to hide it. Quite smart, don't you agree?"

Watson's eyebrows went towards the vaulted ceiling, and I began to regret agreeing to listen to this wild tale before ordering anything involving meat.

"And apparently this poor chap's ghost reassembled itself with the exception of the head, which could not be found anywhere," Sage went on enthusiastically. "And now the fellow rides around the town and area in search of his missing cranium!"

I felt a small pull on my sleeve and looked down while Eve scribbled a short sentence on her notebook. When I grinned encouragingly, I received a twin dark glare from both sides, Mycroft and Watson. However, disapproval from anyone has never stopped me yet, and so I put Eve's question to Sage.

"She wants to know if the horse he rides is the horse that he was supposed to have killed accidentally."

Sage beamed with high pleasure. "Exactly! What a bright young thing!"

Eve beamed up at me and wriggled in her seat while Sage went on. "That's precisely it. Fitting, isn't it? The headless man reassembled, wandering around searching for his skull, on the ghost of the horse he was killed over?"

Waspe coughed discreetly and took a long drink of water. Mycroft finally set his menu down with a resigned sigh, muttering something about not having much of an appetite (a noteworthy sentence, coming from him), and Watson hastily turned the conversation into more suitable channels for dinner converse.

But I watched in amused silence during the rest of the luncheon as Eve absently scribbled sketches of headless horsemen in her little notebook.


	3. Interesting Things

_"When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do."_

_- Walt Disney_

**Watson**

As we ate (Mycroft ended up ordering a sandwich despite his protests that the gruesome story had turned him off food to the surprise of none), I could not help but try to observe and diagnose Mr. Waspe. He did seem sickly, his condition likely somewhere between his partner's worst assumptions and his own insistence of health. It merely puzzled me that a man would be so affected by a fire that had not seemed to leave any lasting damage on the other man.

He must have in turn observed my observations, for he gave a bland but genuine smile. With Holmes and Sage discussing one of his cases and Mycroft attempting to distract Eve from ghouls with math problems, we were left to talk.

"I've had weak lungs all my life, doctor. I was born with fluid in them, and as a child I had every respiratory illness in the books. I know I only survived because my family could afford the best specialists and was willing to pay."

"I cannot imagine any parent not willing to pay all that they could," I commented, raising a brow and glancing towards Eve. "Lord knows I'd empty my back account for my own daughter."

Waspe toyed almost meekly with his meal's garnish. "Yes, well… I was the second son after a very hardy boy and my father was a capitalist to the core. Thankfully, my mother was more of a socialist and she was the neck that turned the head of the family. Lucky, I suppose, for the sickly son survived and stayed behind while the hardy one ran off to America with money embezzled with the company he was entrusted with."

There was a question that had been burning at me since I had laid eyes on the man. "Speaking of capitalism… Please, don't think me rude, but you hardly fit the bill of an entrepreneur."

The man smiled, waving off my apology. "Nothing to be sorry for. I was more than aware of this fault, but nonetheless pursued business. I happened to meet Sage in university, he was working his way through and scraping by on scholarships, but he had the personality for the career. His confidence and my money and accounting skills made for a formidable team, apparently, for here we are today in a situation not unlike the one you and Mr. Holmes have, Dr. Watson."

This I could not help but chuckle at. "The muscle and the brain. An interesting strategy. Neither of you were ever married? Businessmen tend to be very eligible bachelors."

"Sage is a bit like your Mr. Holmes; he does not hate women, per say, he just believes ladies and their sensitivities aren't worth the trouble. Myself… Well, I always pictured myself a family man, I'm very fond of children, but when women say they want a 'sensitive man', they really want a man they feel safe behind, and one who doesn't wheeze on damp days." He smiled despite his grim words. "But then, adoption seems to have suited the three of you. I'm sorry, that was awful to assume, but she is adopted, isn't she…? It's just that Sage said Mr. Holmes referred to her earlier as his daughter, and you did the same… Or is it one of those step-family situations? Oh, I shouldn't have asked…"

I shook my head to make it clear that the topic was not a sensitive one. "It was finalized a little more than a year ago. Legally, Mycroft is her father, but we all have a hand in her. She just calls us by what she wishes, usually by what we call each other. She's…" Here I sighed, glancing towards the girl nibbling on the crusts of her cucumber sandwich as she sketched her goblins over Mycroft's numbers. "She's a handful at times, but I'm glad our paths merged."

Another one of Waspe's kind smiles. The man was pleasant above all else, and it obvious that it was his partner who played the role of the ruthless, bargaining businessman. "She already shows the signs of being a very capable young lady. Perhaps she'll take after you and be a doctor, hmm? There's already such concentration in her eyes."

"Waspe?" spoke up Sage, rising and touching the smaller man's shoulder. "We ought to be getting into town and try to get in touch with the temp office. Idiots probably won't be able to open the front door if we don't send them a telegram about it."

"I think Eve is ready to explore the beach," Holmes added with a smile. I suspect he knew this because she had written I want to go explore the beach. across the top of one page. "We'll likely see you gentlemen again."

"Be a pleasure to," boomed Sage, shaking the detective's hand vigorously before gesturing for his partner to precede him, the pair leaving the dining room for the lobby.

"Interesting fellows," Mycroft commented, grey eyes following their movements as he ignored (or perhaps did not notice) Eve pulling on his sleeve with all her might to direct him towards the glass doors leading onto the patio which in turn faded into the sandy beach.

His brother gave a chuckle. "To say the least. Sage is actually quite interesting. Figures he might have been a detective if he thought it would pay. He used to play rugby among other things, Watson; you two should have much to discuss besides your stories."

The portly brother finally looked down to see the insistent child practically hanging off his coat sleeve. "Something you want, Eve…?"

One could practically see the fire in the child's eyes, and her temporary anger at him was so great she must have forgotten her grip on him was holding her up, for she released it to snatch her notebook and instantly fell upon the floor.

"Do you recall the many talks we've had on the manners of a lady?" sighed Mycroft, a small smile on his face nevertheless, as he scooped the girl up. "… And the ones we've had on gravity?"

Too excited to even put on a front of sulking, she held up her notebook with her request for sand and waves written on it, her face adopting the well-used pleading expression.

"Oh, alright then. But you must be careful around the water, Eve; too many people drown in a year to treat the ocean with disregard."

The elder Holmes was cautious in all his actions, the antithesis of his brother in yet another way, but this demeanour was magnified further when it came to his child. The slightest drizzle warranted a hot bath upon returning home, the first chill in the wind meant a coat was thrust upon her. Eve often found his worrying to be bothersome, but even I could tell she was grateful for the care bestowed upon her, and she would much rather be overprotected than disregarded entirely, though perhaps this sentiment would grow less applicable when she reached her teen years and the mature male of the species factored into things… Mycroft had his ways of intimidating even I; I pitied any young buck who attempted to get past the man for access to his precious little girl.

Mind, when that time came I could not guarantee I would be any more pleasant about the matter.

That was still years away, however, and as of now we were possession of a child who very much wanted to get her feet in the sand. The three of us made our way through to the patio, squinting slightly at the summer day's sun glinting off the rolling blue waters.

**Mycroft**

I had no sooner set Eve down than she wanted to move, to observe the waves more closely, to poke and prod at the various flotsam imbedded amongst the sand… She reminded me so much of Sherlock in those instances (which reminded me, the next time she was on the beach she'd need to wear one of her hats; she was not nearly as fair as Sherlock had ever been, but even her olive complexion would burn given a chance).

Myself, I hung back. I had no desire to get sand in my shoes and under my fingernails. Once sand came to be under ones fingernails, it was nigh impossible to remove it.

Not two minutes after I had seated myself on the patio a suitable distance away from the ornate cage of multicoloured finches that Eve had disregarded in favour of the ocean to watch my daughter cavort around with her two more energetic guardians (and occasionally pull a face at me for being a spoilsport), there was a ruckus to my right, which I had previously identified as a kitchen door based on its "Employees Only" sign and its position relevance to where the waiters had emerged in the dining room.

"Calhoun!" hollered out a man with French accent. "Keep your damn birds out of my kitchen or they're ending up on the specials menu tonight!"

The redhead sprinted from the kitchen, a yellow and a pink bird flitting frantically after him, perching on either of his hands when the kitchen door was slammed again. Seeing my questioning look, he simply responded "Tolerant help is hard to find these days."

"If he's keeping feathers out of the night's pasta, I'm obliged to him."

"Vincent told me you checked in without trouble. I'll assume you found no fault with your accommodations?" Calhoun smiled, well used to my taunts by now; any hope I had of driving him away with them were well gone. "Such a beautiful property, isn't it? I got the whole thing as an estate sale from a contact I have in real estate."

"I must admit, it is lovely," I sighed. Even I had to give credit where credit was due. My grey eyes followed the little girl, currently on her knees and holding up shells for my brother to identify. "I'm glad you had us come here, Calhoun. Eve seems to be enjoying herself, and it's been a hard year of adjusting for her. She's gone from sub-human living to a normal flat, education, interacting with those her own age… I think she needed this treat."

"Of course she did!" the man was his unendingly cheery self as he returned the two finches to their brethren in the cage. "A child like that needs to see new things, needs to have her mind stimulated… I shudder to think what would have become of her if left with those brutes."

I was not entirely sure the girl would have even lived long enough to have her adult psyche damaged… No use thinking of those times now, however. She was no longer a shuddering little skeleton, and she would never be one again. Not in my care. "I'm not quite sure how much relaxation Sherlock is going to have, however… We heard something of a local myth over lunch…"

"Oh, that headless horseman hocus-pocus?" the man snorted. One of the few traits I admired in him was that he was very practical, taking no stock in the rampant superstition that seemed to thrive in Scotland and Ireland (though it was obvious England was not exempt). "I suppose I should be grateful for it, really. It's one of the reasons I got the land so cheap. It is true there was a man who hacked up another man quite a time ago, but the rest of it's lost in the fog. Might have been his brother, might have been a vagabond, and it might have been over a dead horse or the King of Spain. Though the family did breed horses in those days; Percheron, though the family took their name from the horses, not the other way around. Odd you'd be asking about it; you wouldn't believe in the wind if it didn't make your match flame flicker."

"Well, it's piqued Eve's interest, and I think Sherlock's as well," I sighed. Apparently, he'd also taken an interest in threatening to drop a beached jellyfish on Eve, who was darting about irately. "Please tell me there's not some local sheeting up himself and his nag and prancing around foxfire or there won't be any peace."

The Scot chuckled, though I was not sure if it was at me or my brother. "Nothing of the sort, you'll be glad to know. It seems a requirement for seeing the spook is to either be under the age of twelve or to have drank at least five glasses of strong whiskey. Keep the man away from the bar and he should have a ghost-free holiday. Speaking of keeping away from things, thought it'd be my duty to warn you about a Mr. George, a fellow guest at my humble lodge."

My eyes narrowed, heart tightening slightly at the prospect of an enemy so close. "Why, exactly? Is he dangerous?"

He snorted, decidedly more light-hearted. "Doubt it, but he's got four dogs and I know how the little lass feels about them. Names of Grendel, Kracken, Dragon and Aribelle."

I could not help but arch a brow. "Aribelle?"

"The first three are Irish wolfhounds. He hunts in the forest, lots of game in there. Sells it to the cook for something to do. Miss Aribelle is a Yorkshire terrier the size of your shoe. Says it was his late wife's and she'd strike him down if he got rid of it. Just thought a warning would be in order; I've seen ponies smaller than those wolfhounds, Mycroft."

Before I could voice my thanks at his efforts, there was a tugging at my pant leg, and I looked down to see Eve displaying a white circle the size of her little palm bearing a star pattern in the middle.

"That's a sand dollar, Eve," I chuckled, not able to help ruffling her hair. The curiosity burning in those dark little eyes was too much not to reward. "They're in the same class as sea urchins. What you have hear is like a snail's shell, it's hollow, but when they're black it means it's still alive."

Her expression was one of a sceptic, questioning the fact that the stiff, rough thing she was holding had ever been alive at any point. I hardly blamed her; dried sand dollars seemed no more alive than a rock. Calhoun wandered off chuckling and Eve dragged me with that pouting lip of hers onto the sand to show her what else something used to live in.

Dinner ended up being taken in our room, not due to antisocial practises but due to the fact that Eve was exhausted from the long journey, her exploring, and the phasing out of the sugar in her system. She was placid during her bath, and when Dr. Watson went to tuck her in, one could barely tell she was still awake.

I smiled as her tiny mouth stretched in a yawn, kissing her forehead. "Goodnight, Eve. Her rabbit is in the smaller brown bag, doctor." Though we had broken her habit of carrying the animal about everywhere, she still would not sleep without it (though every book I consulted hailed this as normal for a child, I never remember having a stuffed companion).

I myself was quite worn, and therefore I was surprised when I woke seemingly spontaneously in the dead of the night. Often when I woke as such, it was because Eve was awake or in the grips of one of her nightmares. Though she could make no noise, I was a light sleeper and her movements often roused me.

I reluctantly tore myself from the warm bed, making my way to Eve's room. The sitting room lights had been dimmed instead of snuffed, and the girl's door was left half open. While she was not afraid of the dark, per say, poor Eve did not like to wake in the darkness. Another souvenir from her old master.

I never take great pleasure in death, but a sense of grim justice filled me when I watched Jackyl's life claimed by the rope. He had deserved so much worse.

The girl was still, however, covered wrapped about her tiny form and her prized bunny's ears barely visible between her arms, sleeping soundly and peacefully.

I paused briefly by Sherlock and the doctor's door but heard no movement from within, and so I returned to my own bedroom, puzzled as to what had woken me. Perhaps I myself had been dreaming and had simply not remembered…

It was the oddest thing… Just as I was about to find sleep once more, I could have sworn I heard the pounding of hooves.


	4. Corners of the Forest

_"You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes." - A.A. Milne_

**_Holmes_**

Cuisine in general has never held much attraction for me, for I regarded it as a means of staying alive more than a recreational pastime to be tasted and discussed at length. In consequence, I was more than happy to leave the discussion of the breakfast tartines in Mycroft and Watson's capable hands and turned my attentions to more interesting conversation with the girl sitting beside me.

With a picture and a few excitedly scribbled words, I found myself explaining that the shark Eve had seen in the aquarium in London was probably not (at least I certainly hoped not!) an animal she would see during our stay here, ocean or no ocean. She seemed rather disappointed at this; no doubt her curiosity wanted beyond that pane of glass.

A sudden shrill twittering interrupted my explanation of water depth, and a moment later a bright green bird with blue on its wings that I vaguely remembered seeing in one of Calhoun's cages yesterday chirped and then landed on Eve's shoulder, pecking gently at the girl's collar.

Eve grinned and looked up at me for approval, and I returned the gesture.

Mycroft, however, was not quite as happy to see the animal. "Honestly, Calhoun, must you bring those things everywhere you go, especially when one is attempting to finish a meal?" he muttered, eyeing the creature, no doubt worrying about its sanitation.

"I'd have thought you'd be done by now, since you've been sitting there for the better part of an hour and a half," the fellow returned with a twinkle. "I trust you've left some breakfast for the rest of the patrons?"

Watson hid his amusement in his napkin, glancing at me discretely.

I myself grinned ruthlessly – it was always rather entertaining to see another besides me tweak my staid brother into a reaction.

"The food is excellent, Mr. Calhoun," offered Watson, expression flashing from mirthful to casual when my brother glanced or way.

The Scotsman smiled good-naturedly. "Thank you, Doctor. By the way, gentlemen, have you heard the latest in your headless horseman saga?"

I saw Mycroft's eyes sharpen instantly, and I glanced up at the man with interest. "Why? Did something happen last night to add to the legend?"

"Apparently," he shrugged, smile still present as he observed Eve offering his pet some of her leftover toast, "the stable master had to be taken to the village doctor around one this morning."

"What was the problem?" my Boswell questioned, a physician's concern arising.

"Broken arm," Calhoun replied. "Pretty nasty break, by all accounts. Broke it in a fall while running from a headless horseman…or so he claims." He sounded sceptical to say the least.

"Rubbish," Mycroft snorted, equally disenchanted with the story.

"My opinion exactly," our host agreed with a roll of the eyes. "The man more than fits the requirement to be over half-besotted in order to see the apparition. Can't hold his liquor on a regular basis, and he reeked of alcohol when found last night. I'm surprised he could even remember seeing anything at all besides a bottle. Or six."

I noticed that the little blonde chap we had met at dinner yesterday, Dexter Waspe, was sitting at the next table and studiously trying to not give the appearance of eavesdropping.

"Mr. Waspe, you're more than welcome to join in the discussion if you've something to add," I said in some amusement.

The mild fellow jumped half out of his chair at the sound of my voice, but, after his pale face had suffused a deep red in embarrassment, he walked over so as not to call rudely across the space between the tables.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I did not mean to overhear –"

I waved the apology off with one hand as Eve shot the man a shy smile which seemed to put him slightly more at ease.

"You know anything else about the poor fellow's incident?" Calhoun asked.

"It is probably nothing besides my imagination," Waspe began sheepishly, "but…I thought last night that I heard the sound of pounding hooves, in the very dead of night. At the time I thought I was merely dreaming, but in light of this development…"

I saw my brother frown darkly for a moment. "I too was awoken late last night by a similar sound," he remarked. "Though I highly doubt the probability of it being a supernatural occurrence. Most likely just someone's loose steed, or even a deer or something could have set the man off in his condition, making enough noise to waken a light sleeper."

Had it been merely Mycroft that heard the noise of hooves I should probably have discounted the incident, for he had been known to awaken abruptly by a fly's buzzing past his ear. But taken with the evidence of the stable master's broken arm (drink or no drink) as well as the businessman's hearing something similar, the coincidences were a trifle too far over the line of probability to be just that. Assumed explanations rarely turned out to be entirely accurate.

And besides, while I did much enjoy seeing Eve ramble along the beach, there would be time enough in the day for that; I should take pleasure in having something to do other than build castles in the sand and listen to Mycroft worry about what was happening back in Whitehall in his absence.

"Well, Watson, it looks to be a lovely sunny day. What do you say to a morning walk through the woods before it gets too hot?"

My friend merely raised an eyebrow, knowing full well what I had in mind.

Apparently Eve knew as well, for a very clear I want to go too appeared on the page in front of her, accompanied by another of those horrible pleading gazes. I was not about to become the 'bad parent' in this relationship and so very intelligently told the girl she would have to ask Mycroft first.

Said father gave me a glare that could have curdled the milk in Eve's glass when he read the line of print she scooted across the table to him. My brother's mood did not improve even a trifle when the bird on the child's shoulder suddenly decided Mycroft's broader, less bony shoulder was more comfortable and plopped itself down contentedly there.

I heard a polite stifled laugh from Waspe, who promptly excused himself as to not shame the man, as Mycroft shooed the creature from its perch, causing its squawks to draw the attention of the rest of the restaurant patrons before it settled back upon its owner's arm, its feathers ruffled grumpily.

"I don't want you tramping about in the thick of a forest, Eve," Mycroft said sternly. "You could get any number of rashes from poison ivy and other irritant plants, or tear your dress on brambles, or…"

"Mycroft, do you really think I'm going to just let her run through a briar thicket or eat a toadstool?" Watson asked in some amusement – I could tell the girl had already won him with that forlorn face, soft-hearted as he was.

"If I'm correct in guessing where you're going to be headed," Calhoun said knowingly to me, "it's not that far into the woods, and there's a clear trail."

"Sherlock, I do not want you chasing down this infernal legend," Mycroft growled. "I have Trevor coming down later this morning to discuss business and I need you to not be halfway into the next county on a red herring when he does."

"We'll be back before luncheon if convenient," I said flippantly, shoving my chair back from the table in my eagerness to be shut of this too-congenial social atmosphere for a few hours at least.

Watson rose from the table and took Eve's hand – or tried to, for the girl was bouncing with excitement over the prospect of an excursion. Actually, I reflected, as forests were nonexistent in London, she probably had not seen many large trees or the like. No doubt the entirety of our afternoon would be spent in categorising and naming leaves and nuts.

"I'll take her back to get her hat," Watson said as he passed me. "What should I bring back with me?"

"I've my lens already, you might bring your field-glasses I suppose," I replied. "I shall find the location from our worthy host here and meet you outside in ten minutes."

A half-hour later, I was tramping about the fringe of the woods with Watson and the girl in tow. My friend had thoughtfully brought along a small bag for the girl to put what treasures she found in, and in consequence his entire attentions were engaged in patiently explaining what kinds of leaves she picked up from the forest floor as well as keeping her from running off the path in chase of butterflies and brightly-colored plants.

After a quarter of an hour, I had found what I was looking for in a patch of soft ground just to the edge of the path at the line of trees.

"Hoofprints," Watson remarked on the obvious, looking interestedly over my shoulder. "At least we know it was not a deer like your brother suggested; the prints are far too large and heavy."

In fact they were very heavy, especially for the consistency of the soil. It had been a big animal. "We also may safely deduce that it was not a ghost, as the stable master said," I replied dryly. "For I doubt that an ethereal otherworldly would leave actual prints in the ground."

After casting a glance about to ensure that Eve had not wandered off, I continued to search for more marks in the soil. Unfortunately, the horse and/or rider had apparently stuck to the path, and the only other traces I could find of hoof marks were when the animal had evidently listed to the edge of the beaten track.

"Yes, yes, Eve, that's an oak leaf. Find anything, Holmes?"

I scowled, kicking a stray branch in my frustration. "Nothing. With only vague prints here and there it is impossible to tell whence the horse came or where it went. There is nothing more we can learn here. I suggest we – Watson, take the girl!"

I broke off suddenly as a low growling and baying reached my ears. Eve had also heard the approaching noise and was in the process of grasping my legs in sudden terrified panic. Watson hastily reached down to extricate me, holding the girl tightly close to him in comfort, and only just in time; for from around the bend in the path appeared a fellow on horseback, accompanied by two of the largest wolfhounds I had ever seen.

It took no mental processes at all to deduce the man was most likely Stanford George, the chap Mycroft had warned Watson and me yesterday made a practice of hunting in these parts with three monstrously-named dogs.

Eve was not crying, but her arm did have a chokehold on Watson's neck as she looked at the wolfhounds with no little trepidation, shrinking back in his hold as one of the beasts let out a booming bark that echoed in the trees.

"Quiet, Grendel!" the man called, reining to a halt in front of us. "So sorry, gentlemen, it's been a lazy morning hunting and I'm afraid they're a bit restless. Didn't mean to frighten the little one."

"Mr. Stanford George, I presume?"

A pair of sharp dark eyes under a shock of equally dark hair peered at me in some curiosity. "I am, but you have the advantage of me, I'm afraid."

"Sherlock Holmes. My friend, Dr. John Watson, and the girl your hounds are doing a thorough job of frightening is my daughter Eve."

At my pointedly irate sentence, the man suddenly seemed to realise that Grendel and the other monstrous dog were eagerly sniffing at Watson's shoes and barking occasionally, causing the girl in his arms to squirm and hide her face in his shoulder.

"Down, Grendel, Dragon!" George cried sternly, and the hounds reluctantly returned to a place in front of the horse. "Terribly sorry, Mr. Holmes, I'd no idea the child was leery of the beasts."

"Quite all right, Mr. George. Tell me, do you hunt in these woods often?" I got straight to the point, as the hour was growing closer to noon and my brother's secretary was due to arrive around that time.

"Oh, quite, Mr. Holmes. Deer, fowl, anything else the dogs can flush out," the man replied affably, shifting his position as the horse stamped a hoof and whickered.

"Were you out last night around one, perchance?"

"Certainly not," he replied with a look of puzzlement. "Much as I love the sport, rarely do I stay out later than eleven or so. Why exactly are you asking me questions, Mr. Holmes?"

"An incident happened here last night, Mr. George," I replied calmly. "Supposedly the stable master at the hotel was chased by a headless horseman, and I have been able to find a few stray hoof-marks. I was merely wondering if you had seen anything unusual here in the last few hours."

The man's slightly defensive manner dissipated at my matter-of-fact explanation, and he shook his head. "I wasn't out here last night, Mr. Holmes. And I saw nothing out of the ordinary in the woods of late…though Dragon did sniff out something this afternoon that might help you if you're looking for a horse and rider."

The fellow reached into a pocket and then leant down to hand me a scrap of red cloth.

"Plain old saddle blanket, I believe," he told me. "And not from any I've used lately. Not much, but you're welcome to it if it will aid your investigation."

"It's not so much an investigation as idle curiosity," Watson interjected pointedly, glaring at me in a very clear reminder that we were on holiday.

I merely grinned at him and at Eve as she slowly returned to her normal curious gazing about, now that the dogs were docilely milling in front of George in a non-threatening manner.

Between my penchant for attracting trouble, and our girl's curiosity and ability to wrap the dear Doctor 'round her tiny finger, he stood not a chance of preventing my investigating this little puzzle.


	5. Being Children

**AN: Chapter Five, now with fixed quotation marks! I hate this conversion business so bloody much...**

_"Why are men reluctant to become fathers? They aren't through being children." - Cindy Garner_

**Watson**

When we returned to the hotel lobby, it was five past noon and therefore it was unsurprising to see Mr. Trevor, Mycroft's secretary (although that is such a confined term for the amount of tasks the man did) speaking with his employer in an isolated corner.

"Hello, Miss Eve," the man greeted, forever amiable smile on his face as the girl rushed towards him. "On a walk through the forest, were you?"

I was rather impressed with this conclusion; he had never seemed to demonstrate any of the brothers' deductive logic before now. "I'm impressed, Mr. Trevor. Is Mycroft wearing off on you?"

"Don't praise him for that," Mycroft sighed heavily, plucking several very visible twigs from the girl's hair to her annoyance. "Stay still for a moment, Eve. Do you wish for them to tangle impossibly?"

Trevor hefted up a paper-wrapped parcel for display. "Just couriering some work from Whitehall. The bare minimum, but you must understand I don't think we could manage without Mr. Holmes entirely for more than a few days. Truth be told, I would not wish to attempt it."

"Nor do I," sighed Mycroft, brushing the final pine needle from his daughter's shoulder. "I suppose doing the same work in better scenery is some manner of improvement. Now, I believe some lunch is in order; you're rather later in returning than you claimed you would be. Now do you realize chasing about some story is pointless?"

"Five minutes, how torturous," grumbled Holmes with a roll of his grey eyes. "And actually, Brother, while we did not find support of a ghost, there was indeed a horse out last night, and I have reason to believe it was carrying a rider." He held up the scrap of the saddle blanket with a look of triumph. "Mr. George's dog turned this up. Black horse hair on it, he said it was more than likely a saddle blanket. A loose horse wouldn't be wearing a saddle. We also found its hoof prints; it's a big animal, and certainly not a deer."

Eve nodded her agreement, more than willing to turn the incident into a full-blown investigation. Plucking a leaf from her bag, she held it up for further answers as to its species. The girl's curiosity never did rest…

"There are no such thing as ghosts, Eve, and I fail to see why someone would pose as one," the portly man replied, a stern undertone in his voice. "And that's a poplar leaf. Look how dirty your hands are… You'll need to wash up before lunch."

"That's why they invented an ingenious device called the sink, Mycroft. Honestly, a little dirt never killed anyone."

"Says someone who has obviously never been in charge of handling the aftermath of a viral epidemic! Hold still, I've just got to get this smudge…"

Holmes took the liberty of gathering up the girl before his brother could submit her to his handkerchief. "Would you stop being as fussy as a mother hen? She wouldn't be the first child to get dirty, and I doubt she'll be the last."

Vincent, the chief desk clerk, had been bustling along when he paused before our little group. "James Trevor! I haven't seen you in years! What brings you here, vacation? Please tell me you're not making so much more than me!"

"Not quite," replied Trevor, seeming a bit bashful at the suggestion. I was not surprised; my experiences with him had placed him as a very modest man. "I work for Mr. Holmes here, I'm merely delivering some items of his importance. This is Vincent Barke, have you already met? We shared a room at a boarding house during our college careers."

"Calling it a boarding house is far more generosity than it deserves," sighed the clerk. "Recall the time a rat got into the ice box and you wouldn't come down from the counter until I beat it out with my accounting text?"

This made the secretary flush a light red, evoking a stifled snort of laughter from his employer. "Er, yes… Diseased little beasts…"

"You'll excuse us, sirs, if the service at the front desk is a bit lax today," Vincent spoke up, returning to his duties full-heartedly. "As you can imagine, having a stable master absent and scrambling to find a replacement is hardly…" The man paused, eyes finally meeting the scrap of cloth the younger Holmes brother still held. "And just why are you carrying that around?"

"Mr. George discovered it in the forest." Holmes's speech was slow, his eyes glinting with knowledge. "You know what this is."

"Of course I do; that's a piece of one of the saddle blankets used at the hotel."

I blinked, rather surprised. "How on earth can you tell so specifically?" I questioned. The man was a stickler for details, but identifying a scrap of cloth with so much confidence?

"The most recent batch of saddle blankets is unique, you see," he explained rather pertly, not seeming at all concerned with why we wished to know. "Made by a supplier of the British army. They're supposed to be purely grey, but a large number of them accidentally got a quantity of blue dye, creating that odd colour. As they wouldn't do for a professional setting, Mr. Calhoun took advantage and bought them at a massive discount. Not many of the guests use them, mind, and rarely in the woods. Anyone conquering those trails usually brings their own horses, and those who can afford a horse can afford a higher quality blanket for it."

"A big horse, and someone who most likely borrowed it from the hotel's stables…" mused Holmes, a far too familiar glint in his eyes.

When I glanced at Eve, now still in his grasp, a few hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when I saw the identical gleam.

**Holmes**

My brother spoke before I could even get entirely through my thought process. "Sherlock, no. Absolutely not."

"No what, brother? I've yet to say anything."

"I can all but see through your skull and you know it. This is meant to be a holiday, not another opportunity for you to snoop into things that nearly get you killed!" he insisted (and I had little doubt that he could near read my mind), face set in a scowl. His eyes fell upon Eve, stifling a giggle in my shoulder. "And stop encouraging him, Eve! Honestly, the two of you are on par when it comes to maturity."

"The girl will surpass me soon enough," I smiled as petulantly as a younger sibling was entitled to do. "Now, Eve, do you think it's fair for Mycroft to chaste me for doing work when your Aunt Trevor is bringing him a stack of papers to slog through?"

Her laughter renewed, she was forced to duck down so that both Mycroft and Trevor's glares did not melt her.

Of course, Trevor's glare was more of an affronted half-pout, which was one of the many reasons he was more of an aunt than an uncle. That, and it was he who selected the bulk of her clothes; the three of us had a professed ignorance of the clothing of little girls and did not entirely wished to be educated in it.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," piped up Vincent, who had nearly faded from my attention (good employees should do just that, of course, when not needed). "But I am a bit confused as to what is going on."

"Probably nothing," I assured him, for he looked a bit ruffled at the possibility of a disaster at his mechanically maintained hotel. "But I may have just found something to keep my brain from being entirely comatose."

Brother mine seemed to be entirely needled. "Sherlock, it is already well past noon…"

"Go acquire a table, then. Order if you wish, I trust your judgement in that field especially, as its obvious which of us has done the most research on the matter." Another glare… My forehead was going to be red and blistered at this rate. "We'll merely take Eve for a quick glimpse at the nice little ponies before she washes up." I did not wait for an answer, but merely turned on heel and left, Watson scrambling after me and Eve grinning and waving a goodbye to her paternal aunt.

We made haste to the stable, Watson trying to find it in him to admonish me but apparently failing. I expected to see one of the stable hands filling in for their injured overlord, but rather I saw two very unlikely faces, the first of a redhead and the second of a blond, and the horse on which they were attending to was no little pony but rather a towering warhorse that would have made Alexander the Great reach for his purse.

"A beautiful animal, isn't it?" smiled Dexter Waspe as the beast gingerly nibbled at an apple held in his hand. "Percheron, the horses the villa's family took their name from."

"You have a fondness for horses?" I asked, patting Eve in comfort as she hid behind me. I mentally sized the horse up, attempting to glance discreetly at its hooves. It looked slightly too small to have made the hoof print in the forest; a monster of a beast had made that.

"Animals in general," he confessed, obvious happiness making its way through his somewhat sickly appearance. "I find them so calming. I do request you not tell Sage I was visiting the sables, however; I'm afraid he wouldn't be pleased." He deepened his voice as much as he could in a gruff approximation of his partner's. "You'll only breath in straw particles, dirt, filth of the like. Must be something to aggravate you in a place like that, and no sense looking at horses you can't ride."

To my left, Watson chortled despite restraining himself (ironically, Sage sounded rather like the good doctor when he deemed me ill or otherwise unfit for duty). "I suspect it is because he cares."

"Yes, well, I have the best specialists in London on my payroll, and I hate to see that money wasted to follow advice from him." The man tilted his head to smile in Eve's direction. "Would you like to feed her, miss? If your parents don't mind, of course."

My friend did not look so sure, even as our girl began to creep forward in curiosity. "Is it safe, do you think?"

"Oh, Hedwig here is well-tempered," Calhoun assured us, he not being one to ever put any child, let alone this particular child, in harm's way. "The breed is as a rule; gentle giants, so they say. Go on, boost her up."

Watson, still hesitantly but bending to Eve's tugging on his pant leg, lifted her up to the level of the horse's head and stepped forward.

The girl grinned, accepting an apple from Waspe with a nod of thanks and offering it to the great animal, who promptly took to gnawing carefully at the fruit, nickering as she began to stroke its velvety muzzle.

I looked over to see the blond man smiling nearly as widely as my daughter. "It surprises me that you have not made yourself a father yet, Mr. Waspe. You do not strike me as the type to be opposed to adopting in lieu of a marriage."

His cheeks tinted as he shrugged his slight shoulders. Despite it being a rather bold question, it was one he answered. "Sage… is not a great admirer of children. He has his reasons, believe me, and I do not blame him for his inclinations…"

"And why does your partner's 'inclinations' affect your own life so heavily? It is not he who will be the father."

"No, but he would still be family to any children I called my own," he noted softly, eyes returning to my own partner and the girl in his arms. "We're… I won't say we're like brothers, that's not quite right, but I wouldn't alienate him so. I've looked into the matter numerous times, and seeing a foundling girl do so well in a similar situation rather renews such thoughts, but… Well. Your brother never would have undertaken the task without your assured happiness in the matter, would he?"

"Mycroft was assuredly the least happy over said matter at the time," I chuckled. Much had changed, of course, but still there had been that split second pause before he'd put the pen to the paper to sign his name that I thought he might give up on the whole thing.

He seemed to interpret my expression correctly, for he too laughed. "Not all children are expected, but I like to believe the majority of them are loved. And it's warming to see one with a budding love of horses."

I agreed thoroughly; the horse had finished the apple and was nickering even as Eve was pulled away and placed upon the ground.

"Come, all of you, you really have to see these steeds," Calhoun invited, throwing open the stable door further with a heave. "Horses are almost as much of a passion as my birds. First thing I ever stole was a horse, you know."

Waspe threw an understandably confused and worried look in my direction.

"Scottish," I offered. "Quirky humour."

"Er, yes…" He seemed as if he wanted to believe this simple explanation. "Double double, toil and trouble and such…" This unease quickly faded when he lay eyes upon the stalls of fine purebreds, more Percherons but a great variance in size and pedigree. "An impressive collection, Mr. Calhoun!"

"Some belong to guests, of course, but I claim my own," the redhead smiled, looking unsurprised when Eve darted for a creature more her size, a pony with shaggy yet refined, solid-looking in build and nature. "That's an Icelandic pony, Bristol. We'll have to teach you to ride before you leave; everyone should have some degree of comfort in the saddle."

Watson was looking rather unsure of riding lessons, but he did seem more receptive of our girl on a pony rather than one of the massively tall horses.

"Now he's a beauty," put in Waspe, approaching a purely black Percheron in one of the back stables, a brute who made Hedwig look small by comparison.

"Oh, Mr. Waspe, if I were you, I wouldn't…"

Before the warning was finished, the horse's head darted forward, teeth clenching around the blonde's coat collar and jerking him backwards, giving his head a solid rap on the wooden post beside the stall, extracting a rather high-pitched yelp.

Calhoun cringed, steadying the man as he swayed, disoriented, once the horse released him. "I tried to warn you. Juno… He has some attitude issues."

"I'd noticed," the blond grumbled, clutching at his head. "There isn't any blood, is there…? I can't stand blood." He did indeed look rather pale at the prospect, though there was no red staining his pale hair.

"Ah, I take it you've met Juno?" questioned Mr. George as he entered through the side door, leading his mount, the two beasts bounding ahead of him. He grimaced upon seeing us and little Eve. "Oh, sod… Heel!"

The animals skidded to stop, Eve looking as if she might enter full-blown panic, but she was plucked up before the dogs entered her vicinity.

Mycroft was scowling as he boosted her up out of harm's way. "I reserved us a table and ordered, but as you were taking far longer than you promised, I decided to check up on you. Glad to see you're being productive." Glancing down to the girl and seeing her distress, she became cradled in his large arms. "Calm down, now, nothing's going to hurt you."

Having handed his reigns to Calhoun, George came forward to haul the pair of canines back. "Very sorry, sir… They always get restless after a hunt, they're usually well-trained. I assure you they'll bring her no harm." He had somewhat of a curious expression, no doubt wondering what would strike such fear of harmless pets.

My brother gave him an understand glance but no further elaboration. "Sherlock, doctor, I recommend you go to the table, it has a reservation card on it. I'll go help Eve wash up and be down shortly." With that he turned, Eve huddled against his shoulder, eyes screwed shut against the sight of the dogs.

Those of us left behind were rather silent until Waspe spoke with "Good Lord, I understand being edgy about big animals, but she was fine with the horses…"

"She had some hard experiences before finding her true home," whispered Calhoun as he locked the stall door on the horse, obviously taking over as stable master temporarily.

"What on earth could break a child like that?" he murmured, visibly distressed. His tangle with the Percheron was long forgotten (I wondered what else was; that had been a rather hard blow to the head).

"A bad fall," was the only think I could think to say, gesturing for Watson to follow me back into the hotel. "But we can usually put her back together."


	6. Treasured Sleeplessness

_"A daughter is a treasure - and a cause of sleeplessness." - Ben Sirach_

**Watson**

As I followed Sherlock Holmes into the dining room of the hotel, I could see from the absent expression upon his face and his intensely concentrated eyes that he was already drawing conclusions about the small clues we had been given thus far regarding the horse and rider that had supposedly caused the unfortunate stable master's injury the night previous.

Further proof that the detective's mind was very definitely elsewhere manifested itself in the fact that he obliviously walked completely past the table containing Mycroft's reservation card and had to be tugged back to his seat by his collar.

I watched in amusement as he opened the menu upside-down and stared absently at it for well over a minute, then finally blink in apparent satisfaction with his conclusions, whatever they might be. The faraway gleam vanished instantly from his steely eyes and he glanced down at the menu, scowling before flipping it right-side-up and glaring at me as if daring me to comment on the fact.

I merely smiled and studied the luncheon choices, knowing full well that even were I to vocalize the useless question of what conclusions he had reached, he would never tell me until he deemed the time was right. I had decided upon my meal and was closing the menu when both Holmes and I glanced up, sensing the approach of someone to our table.

Mr. George, _sans_ Dragon and Grendel, paused at our table on his way to his own to apologise most sincerely for his dogs frightening Eve. He appeared to be genuinely sorry for causing any disturbance, unintentional though it had been, and Holmes graciously accepted the further apology and motioned the man to one of the empty seats, for Mycroft and the girl had not yet joined us.

"Your clue of the scrap of saddle blanket was much appreciated, Mr. George," my friend told the man thoughtfully, tapping his thin fingers on the tablecloth. "After seeing the inhabitants of the stable, I wonder if Juno might possibly be the horse that was heard in the woods last night. The hoofprints were quite large, and the black hair found on the blanket supports the theory that out of the stable animals, Juno is the most likely to have been out last night," he added, glancing at me.

"If you'll pardon my saying so, Mr. Holmes, I highly doubt it would be that beast," George interjected. "Mr. Calhoun and I have had multiple discussions on the matter of the horses, and that one is so unruly that the man only permits himself and his daughter to ride it. Apparently such rules are a safety precaution; it bucks anyone else."

"His daughter?" I inquired, for I had not been aware of our Scottish friend having a family.

"Oh, yes, lovely girl of about six-and-twenty, apparently," George replied. "I don't believe she lives around here, though that's not a topic that usually comes up in a conversation centering around horses and the like. I could very well be mistaken."

Holmes's only comment was a pensive frown and an annoying tapping of his fingers upon the rim of his water-glass. I glimpsed Mycroft making his plodding way through the tables towards us, a freshly-scrubbed and much calmer little one in tow who was beaming cherubically at her adoptive father.

"I shall make myself scarce and leave you to your luncheon, then," George said hastily, casting the meditative detective a curious glance after a somewhat awkward pause. "And I am sorry about the dogs, Doctor," he added, addressing me as Holmes's brain had already obviously withdrawn from the conversation.

"Quite all right, Mr. George," I replied as the man rose to leave. "I am sure we will see you around the hotel in the near future."

George nodded to me and then to Mycroft Holmes, and began to briskly make his way to his own table some ten yards away.

Mycroft was about to place Eve in the chair by me but she scrambled up beside Holmes before he could. The girl eagerly poked the daydreaming detective in the arm and, whipping out her ever-present notebook, began to scribble furiously, much to my amusement.

The elder Holmes settled with an audible creak and accompanying sigh into the remaining seat, for the moment giving up on attempting to keep the girl's curiosity within the bounds of normality for a girl of six. By becoming a member of this particular family, however, Eve had relinquished (quite willingly) any hopes of the aforementioned normality.

I watched in amusement as Holmes remained oblivious to the small finger tapping him, only snapping out of his thoughts when a smartly-wielded notebook finally swatted his forearm impatiently.

"Yes, what is it?" he asked absently, glancing down at the hastily scrawled sentences and Eve's gesturing to George at the nearby table. "Ah, he was merely apologising for his monstrous dogs frightening you."

Eve sent a wary look in the hunter's direction but nodded at Holmes, safely trusting in the protective circle of our table. My friend glanced at his brother, who was pointedly ignoring the rest of us in favour of perusing his menu and the sheaf of papers Trevor had brought out from London.

"I am happy to report that the morning was not entirely unprofitable, however," the detective went on loudly. "We have made a bit of progress at least."

Eve giggled noiselessly and I smiled when Mycroft merely turned to the back portion of the menu without moving his head or even an eye in his brother's direction, though he could hardly help hearing.

The girl fell to scribbling furiously on her notepad while Holmes looked with interest over her shoulder and occasionally made suggestions. A moment later the two conspirators stealthily pushed the small book under the older man's menu straight into his line of vision.

I counted five before the glossy paper lowered to reveal a combination of fatherly indulgence and brotherly exasperation as Mycroft picked up the quite passable sketch of the enormous horse Juno, carefully shaded a dark charcoal colour.

"No." The decisive rumble rattled the water-glasses upon the table.

"No what?" Holmes asked innocently.

"You are _not_ going to be giving or allowing another to give her riding lessons or anything of the sort until this horseman business is cleared up, Sherlock," the older man retorted emphatically.

"I thought you believed there was nothing to the affair besides over-stimulated imaginations? In that case what harm could there possibly be?"

I settled back to watch the war and cast a fond glance at Eve, who was also observing with wide-eyed amusement. Sometimes I believed the girl truly enjoyed having the three of us squabble amongst ourselves over her care. Most certainly she was enjoying the bickering taking place at the moment – that same gleam indicating a love of mischief that shone so often in Holmes's eyes had long since lit in hers.

"Be that as it may, the fact remains that a man has been injured, whether by an apparition, a living animal, or some other agency," Mycroft Holmes stated dismissively, folding his menu and beginning to leaf through his sheaf of paperwork. "And even were she to learn to ride whilst we are here, nothing in this world, or out of it for that matter, would induce me to allow her to mount one of those enormous Percherons of Calhoun's."

A very clear _He has a pony too_ appeared across a blank page of Eve's notebook, and her largest protector gave a slow sigh as the familiar pleading pout appeared to transform her little face. Our daughter had learnt long ago the invisible but potent power that little children, especially girls, seem to hold over fathers, and she was well-practised in the art of wielding that control to her best advantage. I would not be at all surprised to see the girl astride Calhoun's little Bristol before the afternoon were out (and no doubt Holmes would find a way to accomplish that end with or without elder brother's consent).

For now, a muttered "Perhaps" more than contented Eve, and she returned to putting some finishing touches on Juno's mane and tail while the three of us gave our luncheon orders. Once the waiter had disappeared, Holmes leant across the table toward his brother, obviously going to discuss the case whether the older man wished to hear the details or not.

"It seems to me, Mycroft, that this Juno would be the most logical choice to fill the shoes – or horseshoes, rather – of whatever beast frightened that poor fellow last night," he said, frowning and waving a hand between his brother's paperwork and sharp eyes impatiently.

Mycroft blinked and swatted his sibling's hand away from a bulging manila folder. "What of it?"

"That George fellow told us that Calhoun only allows his daughter and himself to ride the brute, since it obviously is not the most mild of mounts. The logical conclusion would be that Calhoun is the most likely candidate to be riding about in the middle of the night."

I looked at my friend in some disapproval, not willing to believe the amiable fellow would do such a thing, and Eve outright scowled and vented a glare that would melt a colder heart than Holmes's at this intimation against her well-loved and bird-providing friend.

The detective winced more at the girl's disapproval than mine and was about to either explain his words or backtrack, when Mycroft tossed a document down and turned his attention to us.

"Besides the fact that I still am doubtful as to the significance of the entire legend-brought-to-life ordeal, it stands to reason that the stable master would not be frightened of Calhoun riding upon one of his own horses," he pointed out slowly, in the patient tone he used when explaining problems to our little girl.

"It was the middle of the night, and he was half-drunk or more," Holmes protested.

"Even so, a stable master knows his animals and his employer and no amount of drink or darkness would be able to frighten him into thinking he was chased by a man without his head," Mycroft snorted. "Besides this, Sherlock, there is no conceivable motive for Calhoun to stir up fear in his own hotel."

"What fear? I should think that would be an enormous draw for publicity," Holmes said with what I felt was undue excitement. He glanced at Eve, who nodded eagerly with the same shared macabre humour, and I felt my skin crawl.

"What, advertising that a headless horseman goes trotting around at night with the intent to do bodily harm, and has already put one man in the hospital?" I interjected dryly. "It might draw an onslaught of medical men hoping to enlarge their practices or reporters seeking a tabloid story, but most _normal_ people would steer clear of such a place."

I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands when a very emphatic _Being normal is __boring_ appeared in childish scrawl upon Eve's notebook. Holmes's grin and fond pat of approval did nothing to help matters, and Mycroft stifled a moan, attempting to return to his simultaneous scanning of Whitehall paperwork and ignoring his two youngest companions.

"Calhoun's daughter, then," Holmes pressed, as if the conversation had never paused.

"His daughter is in France and will be for another two months, Sherlock," Mycroft said without looking up, frowning at the document held in his hands. "Now do stop this ridiculous making-a-mystery-where-none-is-to-be-had and enjoy your holiday. Or at the least, permit me to enjoy _mine_ without being forced to keep tabs upon you every second for fear you will disappear ghost-hunting or something equally non-productive."

I could have told the man that he was wasting his breath with that admonishment, rather fuelling the fire already burning in my friend's (and Eve's) active mind, but decided against it as he no doubt was already aware of the futility of suppressing Holmes's energy, and by extension Eve's.

The girl began to sketch the pony we had seen in the stables earlier, turning with a beatific smile to me for added encouragement in her art. I returned the smile and watched the spindly drawing take shape on the page for a few moments, after which my attention was drawn by a short harrumph from Mycroft Holmes. I looked up to see the man scowling at the last of his paperwork, which had now become magically sorted into three neatly stacked piles in front of him.

"What is it now, brother?" Sherlock asked absently, finishing off the last of his tea and clinking the cup back down into the saucer. "The Empire falling apart at the seams without you there to hold it in one piece? And here you were riding _me_ about not working during a holiday."

His older brother was frowning as his clear eyes scanned the paper he held for what had to be the third time, completely disregarding Holmes's impertinence.

"What is it?" I echoed with a bit more concern, and this time the man looked up at us, his frown extending further across his face.

"One of my agents is missing, apparently," he informed us, the lines in his brow deepening in the only expression of worry he would visibly reveal. "This note says he has not been in contact with anyone for over two weeks."

"And that is cause for concern?"

"It could be an indication of trouble, yes, Doctor. The uncertainty of the unknown in this business especially is always cause for concern, and with this fellow it is highly unusual to go for so long with no contact. I freely admit that I do not like it. Not at all."

Such a free admission to unofficial parties showed more clearly than anything else just how unsettling the matter was, yet when his watery gaze fell onto Eve, her attention torn from the drawing and her expression bleak at his distress, Mycroft forced a smile and patted her head.

"On the other hand, however, two weeks isn't enough to raise the alarms," he assured her, although his tones seemed hesitant at best. "Certainly nothing for you to worry over, Eve."

The little one was too perceptive to be deceived by fake smiles, but nevertheless faked one of her own and accepted the comfort.

**Holmes**

Judging by the exasperated tones coming from the water closet, Eve was enjoying her bath time much more than Watson was.

When my gaze fell on my brother, brooding in the armchair by the fire with the handful of documents, the smile fell from my face. "How bad is it?" I questioned softly, knowing he would appreciate a question straight to the point.

"It could be nothing." His face was heavy with worry for it being nothing. "He's given a bit of leeway as a very talented agent, but two weeks without contact and no prior warning… I'm having nearby agents investigate it."

"I am sorry." Mycroft likely knew the man personally, and if not at least felt responsible for those under his command. I knew my brother, and at the base of his personality was a desire for control. A missing agent was out of his control, and therefore it bothered him greatly.

The bathroom door opened and our daughter bolted from it, wet hair laying limply on her shoulders. She smiled, running to hide behind Mycroft's chair when Watson followed after her looking decidedly damp.

"She's as clean as I could get her without drowning her," the doctor sighed, nevertheless smiling. "Ask nothing more of me tonight, gentleman."

Mycroft immediately snapped his portfolio shut. No matter how stressful his work became, he never let Eve be privy to it. "I suppose that means you're on tuck-in duty, Sherlock." Myself and Watson putting her to bed was a rare treat, and she made it clear she wanted us to do so while we were on holiday.

The girl shook her head, wriggling out of her hiding place and squirming up into Mycroft's lap and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Usually, her stranglehold would have annoyed my brother, but instead he blinked in surprise. "You're sure you wouldn't rather Sherlock? I can tuck you in any night at home." At the nod against his shoulder, he smiled softly and wrapped his arms around her, rising. "Well, come on, then. It's already past ten." He carried to her bedroom, closing the door halfway and dimming the light.

"Perceptive," muttered Watson. "She lives up to her last name."

"Sympathetic. She lives up to her middle one," I added, not able to restrain a short sigh. She'd known his worries and wished to ease them, sweet girl… But all the same, a problem like this would take more than a smile and a hug to solve.


	7. The Cure for Boredom

_"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." - Ellen Parr_

**_Watson_**

"_Eve Johanna __Holmes_!"

As flattered as I was that Eve had chosen my name as her middle name, I often wondered if she wouldn't have been better off in absence of one. A middle name lent so much power to a parent when they were angry.

It was raining for the third straight day, and the child was beginning to develop cabin fever. Not that I blamed her; being cooped up even in a large building was hard for one as active as her, but all the same the rain was too heavy and the air was too cold to risk prolonged periods outside, especially for one with previous respiratory troubles.

Mycroft had the patience of a saint with Eve, but three days of having both her and his brother in close quarters, added to the stress of the papers he continued to receive, I did not blame him for being a bit highly strung, especially given the setting of her apparent misbehaviour. From day one, table manners had been a focus of conditioning for the girl in Mycroft's home, and not even three days of imprisonment was excuse for behaving poorly at a meal.

The girl, however, gave an affronted look at the accusation, her face clearly questioning that he either charge her with a crime or release her from his glare of displeasure. This wasn't the usual feigned innocence, either, at least as far as I could tell.

He pointed a thick finger towards the small creamer, drawing my gaze as well. Apparently we had failed to hear the plopping as someone dropped sugar cubes into it in a fit of boredom (easy enough to believe; the dining room was quite crowded, seeing as those who would have eaten on the patio, gone to a restaurant or picnicked were forced inside). The frequency was illustrated by the fact that the pile of cubes was not entirely melted.

Eve scowled furiously, shaking her head, crossing her arms firmly. She was not about to plead guilty.

"Oh, really?" rumbled Mycroft, gaze narrow. "If it wasn't you, who was it?"

_Plop!_

All three of us glanced over to Holmes, in the process of loading another sugar cube on the end of his spoon to catapult into the creamer. Upon seeing us, he glared. "Do you mind?"

His brother kneaded his temples. "I should have known… I'm sorry for accusing you, Eve."

Frown gone, the girl hugged at his arm by means of apology. Eve knew how heavily his work pressed on him sometimes, and never held anything against him for too long.

"No, it's not alright. The weather and my work can't be blamed on you." He patted his daughter's head, prompting her to release him, and rose. "I'm off into town to drop those new papers off personally. I should only be an hour at most." With a final pat, he departed from the dining room.

"Mr. Calhoun was telling me the other day there's a little library in the west wing with a lovely view of the gardens," I put in, hoping I could occupy the attentions of both children I had been left in charge of. "Eve, you should bring your watercolours and do some painting, and there are surely some interesting books in Calhoun's collection, Holmes."

At last there was something that perked both of their interests, and so after a short stop at our room for Eve's paint kit we headed to the west wing, poking about the doors until we found the plush room walled with sizeable shelves and a picture window overlooking the blooming rose bushes (and giving us a good view of the downpour outside).

At first glance I thought we had the room to ourselves (unusual considering the weather), but then I saw a small figure in one of the armchairs, a warm blanket about his shoulders and buried in a book of local foliage.

"Mr. Waspe," I greeted as Eve made a beeline for the window as if she were afraid that someone would steal her prime painting place. "I hope we're not intruding on your solitude?"

"Oh, no, by all means." Though his smile was broad enough, my doctor's eye could see he was even paler than usual, and his voice and breath had a rasp to it. "Most guests prefer the roomy reading room stocked with game boards and the like. But it has popular periodicals and romances, mostly. I was the mood for a classic." He displayed the spine of his chosen book, Spencer's "Faerie Queene".

I selected the day's newspaper (still slightly damp) and took a seat across from the man, glancing towards Holmes who was pacing the shelves like a hunter stalking a buck. "If you'll forgive me, Mr. Waspe… Are you feeling well enough to be up and about?"

"The damp always gets to me," he dismissed even as he had to hide a slight cough. "But I've been abed the last few days and I would have gone out of my mind had I not escaped. Sage is occupied in town most of the day meeting with a client who happened to be stopping in here between trains, and so I figured this would be my only chance."

"Sounds like someone I know," muttered the detective as he breezed by me in pursuit of worthy reading material.

"I'm sure he means the best for you." Perhaps I was a bit pert, but after years of forcing Holmes into bed for much-needed rest (and more recently Eve, though at least one could pick her up if she resisted), I could understand the motivation for such fussing.

"He does, I wish to imply nothing less, but I needed to stretch my legs for a bit." He paused, glancing towards the window and blinking. "My! Do you see what your daughter is doing?"

I jumped up and spun on my heel, half worried she had taken to re-painting the wallpaper, but all I saw was her perched on the window seat, little brow furrowed in intense concentration on the paper before her. As dissimilar as they looked, when she set to work on something her expression was identical to that the brothers Holmes often wore. "Don't frighten me like that…! Last time someone asked me that question she was leaning over a barrier in the natural history museum to get a better look at the piranhas."

"I apologize." Waspe did indeed look greatly remorseful for my sudden reaction, but still pointed towards my girl. "I only meant her painting… She's so young, but it's quite good."

This was no surprise to me; Eve had taken to art like a duck to water ever since Inspector Lestrade had thrust a watercolour kit (pilfered from the evidence locker) into her hands to keep her from mangling his paperwork when he had found himself a reluctant babysitter. She had, after all, used her drawings to communicate before gaining the concept of words. As a doctor, I felt it was a healthy emotional outlet for her feelings. As a parent, I believed her to be the greatest artist in the world.

"She has a talent," I smiled with a shake of my head. "I'm only glad we can nurture them." My attention was drawn away from Eve (at the moment, I was quite certain she would be painting the ceilings of chapels before too long) when there was a polite knocking.

"Mr. Waspe, I suspected if not in your room you would be here," Vincent, the clerk, spoke with a small smile. "Packages have arrived for you at the front desk. We can't courier them to your room at this exact time, there are a great outflow and influx of guests today, our bellhops are occupied, but perhaps in an hour…"

"Actually, I'll move them myself if you don't mind. There shouldn't be too many." The man shed the blanket, apparently it belongs in the library, and after glancing at the page for its number he lay down his book as well.

"If you'd like, I could help you." I was forced to double-check to make sure this was actually Sherlock Holmes offering himself up for manual labour, I could scarcely believe it. "Your health is plainly compromised, and your leg is apt to pang in this weather."

The small man blinked, insisting "Oh, no, really, I couldn't ask you to…"

"You shan't have to ask, I'm offering." Was that actually a smile upon his face? I believed it was, but I did not know why. "Really, allow my assistance."

"If you insist, I suppose that would mean we could do it in one trip," he finally agreed with an appreciative smile. "My thanks, Mr. Holmes. It shouldn't take long at all."

"Excellent." With a smile my way, my friend following the man out the door, and I only hoped his intentions were truly good.

**Holmes**

No doubt Watson had been pondering my intentions when I offered to assist the diminutive businessman, but he really need not have worried. I was merely a bit curious about the man; he was well-spoken and obviously well-educated, something that was becoming increasingly rare in the merchant class, and there was something in his eyes, more specifically their movements, that struck as familiar. He was a sharp observer, obviously not as Mycroft and myself were, but I would be comforted to confirm he was never looking for anything in particular.

Besides, I really was in want for any kind of physical challenge; long ambles across the beach and forest with a little companion with endless energy had spoiled me.

The boxes at the front desk looked bulky and a bit awkward, but when I tested the weight of the largest I found it to be surprisingly light.

"It's mostly packing," offered Waspe, seeing my expression easily enough. "They're samples, to base a decision about the replacement machinery. The offices were above that factory, you see. The bottom level wasn't damaged nearly as badly, but the insurance payout was more than expected so we've decided to update while it's convenient."

"Odd that they didn't raise your deductible enough to put you out of business." I took the majority of the boxes, and the larger ones, easy enough to handle, leaving the smaller ones to the other man.

Here he offered a half sly, half shy smile. "Our insurer was the one who was the cause of it. It was listed as an act of God, but unless it's the man's middle name it was he who was messing about with the gas pipes insisting he was making them safer. May the man never grow eyebrows again serve as a reminder that job specialization furthers our society."

I let out a laugh as he led the way to his room. I made an effort to shorten my stride; even Watson had trouble keeping up with my natural step. "If I may ask, exactly what kind of business are you in?"

"We have a few factories. Cheap doorknobs and hinges is the bulk of the product we ship, then we have a separate company for knobs and orate gates, and our rather pet project is a rather high-class stationary company that's become highly popular."

So I was likely carrying a box of packing and doorknobs. What a wonderful use of my brilliant mind. Still, anything was a break from the tedium. "An interesting assortment."

"There's really very little difference between selling one product or another, it's more about the market. Still, it doesn't hurt to have some background information, so I've actually learned quite a bit about casting and metal compositions and the like over the years. Makes it easier for one to be cheated."

I arched an eyebrow. "You have quite a broad range of knowledge, then?"

"Little bits of everything, I like to think. One who is confined to their bed often must learn to find gentle amusements. I actually read our encyclopaedia set straight through when I was twelve, nearly drove the maids insane with my chatter."

An interesting man, to say the least. "Mr. Sage seems quite interested in my stories. Could you claim a similar fondness for detective work?"

Waspe blushed slightly with a shake of his head. "No offence meant, the stories Dr. Watson writes are quite good, but I'm not one for a taste for crime. I can't even read the ones with murders in them. Because I know they actually happened, you understand. A bit… feminine, so everyone tells me, but I'm rather a pacifist."

I would argue such a trait was feminine; I knew a certain girl currently painting who got as excited over a case as she did over gourmet sweets. When the man stopped in front of a door, placing down his boxes to lay hands on a key, I assumed they were his own rooms. "Sharing lodgings with Mr. Sage?"

"Adjoining rooms," he corrected, opening the door and gesturing me in. "I insisted upon my privacy and Sage insisted upon my safety."

"Understandable." The rooms were of high standards, nothing less than I would expect a man raised in wealth would accept. "So, Mr. Waspe, I really must ask; what are your opinions on the headless horseman business?"

I was curious at what a fresh viewpoint would offer. But then, he knew nothing of the clues Watson and I had unearthed unless he'd been talking to Mr. George, and I had never seen the two talking.

Waspe grimaced slightly. "That foolishness still…? I'm hardly a detective, Mr. Holmes, but… Well, if you really want my opinion, I believe it was a poacher. They obviously didn't set out to injure the man, there are more brutal and accurate ways to do that, but nor did they stop to help him, meaning they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing yet nothing was stolen or even broken into, so I believe someone was hunting game illegally up in the forest and the stable master had the misfortune to catch them while not in his right senses. Either that, or there was nothing there at all. Men have imagined stranger things under the influence, after all."

A respectable theory, really, the man was obviously of moderate intelligence. "It may well have been something of the sort," I agreed, though no poacher would have taken out Juno. Though I'd have to check local records, see if no one owned a horse similar to him that would have access to the saddle blankets… But I hadn't thought of someone breaking in; there had been no locks broken or disturbed, so someone had access to the stables.

"Thank you for your help, Mr. Holmes. It's much appreciated," the blond smiled, hands folded in front of him like a butler. "I suppose I'll start to slog through this; I shouldn't keep you from your time with your family."

I gave a brief nod of my head, heading back to the library. I found Eve done her painting of the rose garden and now attempting to coax Watson into a pose. I settled myself down with some Marlow and left it to them, thinking that perhaps the crass fellow who did the Strand illustrations had best watch his back.


	8. Mud Slinging

_"He who slings mud usually loses ground." - Adlai E. Stevenson_

**Holmes**

It was silence rather than any particular noise, that awakened me the next morning; the sudden realisation that the rain had decided to stop attempting to drown the holidayers seemed abruptly louder in my room than the crashing thunder (and Watson's quiet snoring) had been the previous night.

I rubbed my eyes in the grainy early morning light, and then laughed aloud when a sudden exuberant pounding of small fists on the next door and a sleepy, startled yelp from my brother indicated that our young charge had also been awakened by the allure of the water-logged but sunny out-of-doors and was more than eager to be out embracing it.

I yawned, sat up in bed, and briefly contemplated how close Mycroft would come to murdering me by torture methods only known to elder siblings were I to allow the girl to make mud pies after breakfast.

Across the room Watson, who usually slept quite lightly but had taken to rather deep snoring after a longer and more trying stint of child-care than usual last night, growled something rather crankily at my tentative "Good-morning" and rolled over with the coverlet over his head, ignoring the lumbering sounds of my brother awake and moving about in the next room as well as my rattling around in the wardrobe for my clothing.

I left him there, knowing if he did not get up shortly Eve would see to it that he did (and the latter would certainly be entertaining if nothing else), and after making myself presentable entered the suite's sitting room.

Our little one was standing by the window, clad in a spotless blue frock that no doubt would remain in that condition for all of an hour at the most had I any say. She looked eagerly down at the sun shining and reflecting in brightly-coloured rays off the puddles on the walks and the courtyard below.

"Good morning, Mycroft," I called, banging companionably on his door as I passed, and received an expressive grunt in return through the oak.

Eve turned to me, her eyes positively sparkling in the rays of the cheerful sun, and pointed below at the nearby stables. Her meaning was abundantly clear without even the use of those hand signals that I could read more easily than even Mycroft could.

"Yes, well, we shall have to get you down to ride one of Mr. Calhoun's ponies, now won't we?" I said with a smile, crouching in front of the girl to tie a loose boot-lace; it would not do to have her tripping on the stairs, as being laid up in bed would be even more detrimental to her active little mind and body than the same situation would be to mine.

The wary dark eye I saw aimed toward my brother's door indicated that she had already approached Mycroft with the idea and had received a dubious-at-best response from him.

"Don't worry," I assured her with all the resolve that comes of years of thwarting an elder sibling's protective care (and many more years of doing the same with a certain physician of my acquaintance). "He is liable to be so preoccupied with this Whitehall mess that he won't even notice we're gone until it is too late. And if all else fails, the good Doctor has become rather good over the years at distracting people away from me for my own purposes."

I finished tying the rebellious shoe-string and regained my feet only just in time to dodge the affectionate hug the girl aimed for my neck. Not fazed in the least, she settled for my legs in lieu of the former when I stood too hastily.

Mycroft exited his bedroom at that juncture, immaculately dressed as always even on holiday, and took a final glance in the polished mirror by the door to adjust his cuff-links.

"I am going down to see if Trevor has sent any further word," he informed me tersely, though his impassive gaze softened as Eve beamed cheerfully up at him and he bent to smooth out the ribbon in her hair.

The granite behind his watery eyes told me more news than his words had. "You know Calhoun or Vincent would have sent word up if there were any new developments…You are really worried about this, aren't you?"

"Quite," he replied shortly. "I shall join you for breakfast shortly. Yes, yes, Eve, you can go outside as soon as you eat – but a healthy breakfast first, mind you."

I rolled my eyes, for my brother's idea of a healthy breakfast entailed eating anything and everything digestible that was not permanently affixed to the tablecloth. One more characteristic that Eve and I shared was a disregard for such mundane trivialities as nourishment when a more interesting situation was at hand; Mycroft was unfortunately well aware of the fact and was even more emphatic about proper eating habits (for her at least; he had long ago relinquished the condition of my health to another) than Watson was.

Which reminded me to set our adoptive daughter upon him, as the fellow was still snoring quietly in the other room. For one without the capability of speech, she was still a boisterous and silently loud child, and entirely too active for this hour of the morning as evidenced by her vigorous bouncing on the end of Watson's bed.

That sentiment my friend vehemently agreed with a half-hour later (though he did wait until Eve was distracted by locating her small bag that held her ever-present notepad before voicing it), when he stumbled out of the room to glare venomously at me, to which I merely pointed out that his cravat was askew.

"You're a bit testy this morning," I observed the obvious, more for the sake of annoying him into wakefulness than out of any real malice.

"So would you be, if you'd been forced to mediate among two children and a worried government official for three days, imprisoned indoors with three minds far beyond your own capabilities," he muttered, yanking on the stubborn tie as we exited the suite behind Eve, who was bouncing toward the stairs with great excitement, running her little hand along the polished wood of the banister despite Watson's look of distaste and muttering about germs and such.

"Really, Watson, you underestimate yourself…wait, two children?" I scowled, a bit piqued with his intimation that I had as short an attention span as our daughter did. Mine had to be at least a quarter-hour longer than hers.

Now, what were we going to do after breakfast?

**Watson**

The morning meal was a quick and quiet affair (thankfully without any further adventures involving sugar cubes and the creamer) until Mycroft returned from the front desk, where he had been talking to the clerk Vincent. I saw to it that Eve ate all of her toast, to which she submitted with little complaint, well knowing she needed all the ammunition she could get to induce Mycroft into allowing her on a horse today in the sunshine.

I said little over my breakfast, being still rather tired, and Holmes remained busily engaged pointing rudely at people and explaining personal deductions about them for his smallest audience, patiently expounding upon his trains of reasoning in that odd hope that the girl would learn to follow in his footsteps of detection.

Lord forbid. The world was not yet prepared.

"We ordered for you, brother," Holmes informed the man as he settled with a creak into the chair beside me, sighing wearily. "Plenty of food, even for you."

Proof of Mycroft's disturbed state of mind was evidenced in that he did not even acknowledge the jab from his sibling, much less respond to it. I glanced at Holmes, whose brow furrowed, and Eve tugged on Mycroft's arm, her little face worried and disregarding of the jam-covered toast she had been so eagerly consuming.

Mycroft absently patted her dark hair with an automatic reassuring smile, and flicked a glance toward me and his younger brother. "Two more of my men are missing now," he reported wearily, drumming a set of large fingers on the white tablecloth. "This is obviously no coincidence at this stage in the game. Something is wrong, very wrong."

Two more? I looked at Holmes, who appeared vaguely worried but not overly so. "It is a puzzle, brother, but hardly enough to keep you from enjoying your breakfast. Has your department been able to make no progress?"

"I am not very hungry, Sherlock," the man replied mechanically, his large brow furrowed in deep thought. "And no, nothing. These agents have merely disappeared off the face of the planet without any indication or trace as to their whereabouts. I may perhaps go back to London this afternoon, but there is no reason why the three of you should not remain here."

"Return to London? Why, in heaven's name?" I exclaimed, and Eve scowled and glared forbiddingly at her largest guardian, more out of concern for his health (for he had needed the rest as much as we did) than a feeling of abandonment, for she knew us better than that and trusted us completely by that point in her young life.

"Sherlock, this is growing rapidly out of hand. These men are disappearing under circumstances that point very definitely to foul play, and I very well could be the end target of whatever is the cause." Mycroft accepted a cup of coffee from a passing waiter and dropped an amount of cream in it, stirring thoughtfully.

"If that is the case, then you shall be safer here than in London, certainly," Holmes interjected sensibly, "since few save your secretary know exactly where you are. Besides, you can do no more there than you can here. Do stop worrying so; you're going to give yourself a migraine and causing your stress headaches is my exclusive privilege."

I snorted into my coffee, and Eve giggled noiselessly as the elder glared at the younger in a fit of indifferent annoyance before deciding he was not worth expending the energy necessary to carry on either an argument or an agreement.

I cleared my throat in the exasperated silence. "Has there been any further news about the Headless Horseman?"

Holmes pulled a face at the title, as I knew he would, and Eve grinned, leaning forward eagerly and stuffing the last bit of jam-coated toast into her mouth before remembering to use her napkin.

Mycroft rolled his eyes and drained his coffee-cup. "Not that I have heard, though that Sage fellow was out at the desk discussing the attack upon the stable master with Calhoun just now."

"It was hardly an attack," Holmes protested logically, tapping his spoon absently against his empty juice glass. "More like an accident that the horseman did not bother to rectify."

"Be that as it may, it still is a serious matter, a broken leg," I interjected. After a few seconds of the steady clanging I reached over and removed the spoon from Holmes's twitching fingers; without pausing a second he merely picked up the fork instead and commenced the distracted clinking again, much to Eve's amusement.

"Quite so, Doctor, but nor is it such an enormous catastrophe as that man was trying to make it out to be," Mycroft replied, scowling at his brother. "I believe he went on about the thing the entire time I was getting my reports from Whitehall about how there had to be more to the matter than met the eye, that the legend was really being revived or else was positively true and he wanted to find proof of it, etc., etc. Deucedly annoying. Put the fork down, Sherlock, for the love of heaven!"

"Perhaps he is merely concerned about the affair," I answered, casting a wary glance at Holmes. The detective had already lost interest in the conversation and the fork-clinking and was allowing Eve to take his magnifying lens and inspect a fingerprint upon a clean water glass that he snatched from a nearby empty table. "With his partner in poor health, meeting up with a rider – headless or no – in the dark could easily cause the man to have a similar accident as befell that poor chap the other evening or worse. He is probably just worried about him."

Holmes made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded suspiciously like a derisive "Pah," but when both his brother and I turned a reproving look upon him he was apparently quite studiously engaged in showing Eve the differences in finger-marks, appropriating my half-drunk juice glass as a second example.

Mycroft was to await further word from his secretary and so stayed round the hotel all morning; it fell to Holmes and me to take Eve out to the stables, for after Calhoun's stopping by the breakfast table to inform us the ponies were in fine form this morning there was no preventing the girl from taking the good-natured Scot's offer of riding lessons.

Whilst Calhoun was settling Eve upon the shaggy Bristol's back (under my very watchful eye, and Holmes's too though he made a show of poking about the stables for clues to cover his solicitous worry), I glanced back at the enormous Juno's stall. The horse's head appeared suddenly, startling Holmes into jumping back in time to avoid his hair being nipped by the animal.

"If that is the beast that is carrying our cranially deprived rider, the man must be a true horseman indeed," my friend muttered, warily edging back from the animal's stall as it flared its nostrils in his direction, eyeing him with a glittering gaze. "I have not seen anyone yet the brute did not try to take a bite out of."

"Aye, my daughter and myself are the only ones I'm aware of that get along with him," Calhoun called, slowly leading the pony from the stall with Eve clinging like a small burr to its back, her eyes wide with excitement.

I was not overly keen on the idea of riding lessons for the girl, but Calhoun's gentleness and the pony's rather solid build and obviously well-trained manner allayed my fears somewhat. The man truly loved the little one, and he well knew how much she meant to her three guardians; he was completely trustworthy. Eve herself spared not a hand to wave at us but kept both firmly gripping the reins as Calhoun was instructing, though her eyes shone with a thrill that warmed my heart and even made Holmes smile a little.

"Easy, lass, don't tug on the reins," Calhoun directed, reaching up to demonstrate. "Just move them over one side of the neck to guide him, you see? Pull back to stop, but not any other time. That's it." The redhead smiled approvingly as Eve followed his directions, her little face scrunched up in concentration as she moved the pony slowly toward the half-open stable doors with our host alongside watching protectively.

One of said doors suddenly banged open with enough force to startle me and the closest horses into jumping slightly. Thankfully, little Bristol was stocky, placid, and well-trained, and merely blinked boredly at the tall figure striding through the door with a small splash of muddy water from the puddles outside.

"Terribly sorry," Richard Sage muttered, red-faced as Calhoun turned a disapproving eye upon him. "Wind caught the door. Morning, gentlemen, Miss Eve."

Eve, evidently more comfortable now upon her gentle mount, spared a moment and one hand to wave briefly at the newcomer, to which the man smiled and after a moment's hesitation waved back.

"Do you extend your riding lessons to adults, Mr. Calhoun?" the fellow asked hesitantly, walking along the stalls and peering eagerly into each one. "I want to do a bit of investigating myself," he added to Holmes, who had raised a quizzical eyebrow. "There's more to this horseman business than meets the eye, you know. I admit I've never been on one of the beasts before, though I've seen them ridden often enough at the occasional races…it cannot be that hard?"

"Never ridden?" Holmes inquired, watching curiously as Sage walked along the stalls toward the back of the stables.

"Not for a moment, I'm afraid; no opportunity thus far, I suppose," Sage shrugged easily. "But no better time than a holiday to learn, and after this rain there are bound to be traces of that headless legend around the place somewhere!"

"I'll get you one saddled shortly, soon as I see the little one around outside for a few moments," Calhoun called over his shoulder. "Best to start with one of the beauties close to the front of the stable, Mr. Sage; they're considerably more gentle than those at the back. Take a look round, by all means."

I had repressed a grin, both at Sage's enthusiasm regarding the so-called ghostly horseman and at Holmes's obvious disgust with the same, and now could give vent to my amusement by smiling approvingly at our adoptive daughter as she beamed back at us atop her pony.

"Be back shortly, gents. And don't look like that, Doctor, the lass is perfectly safe, you can take my word for it."

Eve nodded emphatically, smiling reassuringly at my dubious expression as Calhoun guided the pony toward the open door and the sunshine glinting off the puddles outside. I glanced back at Holmes, to see that he was leaning against the rough stable wall, watching Sage inspect the fine animals in their stalls.

"Oh, I say!" the man exclaimed suddenly. "That is a monstrous beast, but such a beauty!"

I opened my mouth to warn the man about Juno's temper, but suddenly felt Holmes's thin fingers grasp my arm, and he shook his head at me. Puzzled, I subsided – and then saw that rather than darting for Sage the enormous black horse was whickering quietly and doing no more than blinking at the fellow.

I raised my eyebrows at Holmes, who placed a thin finger to his lips with a mysterious half-smile. "Well, you appear to have a way with the animals, Mr. Sage," he spoke cordially. "I wish you luck in your ghost-hunting. Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me know if you discover anything?"

"Oh, certainly," Sage replied amicably, hesitantly patting the nose of the enormous black horse. I expected him to get his hand bitten off, but the fellow received not even a curled lip in response. "I shall no doubt see you at luncheon, then. Yes, you are a fine one, aren't you? Shouldn't like to try to ride you myself, mind…" This last was spoken to Juno just as Holmes indicated the doors and we slipped through them into the sunshine.

"No one but Calhoun and his daughter, eh?" I said pointedly, keeping my voice low.

"Let us not jump to conclusions without sufficient evidence, Doctor, but I do concur on the fact that it is rather remarkable. And what is remarkable often turns into what is important." Holmes frowned, tapping a finger contemplatively against his thin lips as he watched Eve slowly guiding her pony along the somewhat muddy path toward us. No words were needed to voice her obvious thrilled happiness, even had she been able to utter them, evidenced by her shining eyes and obvious enjoyment of her new-found pastime.

"What are you going to do about Sage? Do you suppose he was telling the truth about never riding a horse before?" I asked, waving at the girl as she passed, headed into another slow loping circle under both my watchful eye and that of our host, who was beaming at the girl in great pride.

"Docket it, for now; I shall be sure to pump his partner for the truth regarding his equestrian abilities." he muttered. "But the man was quite correct in one thing at least; this business is much deeper than we are being led to believe."

"Not as deep as your brother's governmental problems," I pointed out worriedly. "I've rarely seen him look so upset as he was this morning."

"Nor have I, and the few times I have it has either been over my destroying his spotless apartment in search of something or in dripping blood all over his immaculate flooring," Holmes agreed flippantly. "Or I suppose when he was forced last year during that crisis in the Foreign Office to go without both breakfast and luncheon in the same day…"

"You know you aren't helping matters by making fun of him," I sighed, massaging my forehead wearily.

"Possibly," my friend chirped with unmitigated glee, and trotted over to Eve, who had pulled up beside Calhoun and was fairly bouncing in the small saddle in her excitement of accomplishment. Holmes swung the girl off the pony with a congratulatory grin, promptly setting her down with a large splash in the closest deep puddle and then laughing heartily at her chagrined expression.

The girl screeched noiselessly and immediately jumped up and down, effectively drenching my friend's legs and a good portion of the rest of him before slinging a handful of the mud at his jacket. The girl did have deucedly good aim, thanks to Holmes's lessons with a lawn-tennis ball (after breaking various items in Mycroft's apartment elder brother had insisted they move all such active pursuits to the war zone that was 221B Baker Street).

Calhoun's face turned a complimentary shade to his hair from repressed laughter as Holmes yowled and returned the favour with even better aim, and our host hastily led the poor unsuspecting Bristol out of the way before the noble beast became collateral damage in a mud war.

I put my face in my hand for a moment as an errant clod of muck splattered on my shoe.

It was going to be a long, long day.

--

And it was, though being forced to spend it trapped indoors for yet another morning and afternoon would have been far worse. Poor Mycroft's nerves were worn to a parchment-thin edge by the time Holmes tired of his rash mud-battle with our daughter, and it took a good deal of finesse and a bit of desperate prevaricating on my part to sneak them both past where he was talking worriedly with a visiting Mr. Trevor in the dining room, and up to the suite, where Holmes hastily took charge of a very muddy little girl and I returned to stall for time downstairs.

Between the strain to my nerves, the elder Holmes's uncharacteristic moodiness over his department's disappearing agents, Eve's unbounded love for the sunshine and all things beach and water and horse-related, and Holmes's absolute enthusiastic support for it all, by the time we had finished supper and were intent upon putting our young charge to bed that night I was positively exhausted, though it was more the type of weariness that makes sleep impossible due to an overactive mind.

Mycroft, knowing that his distraction over his governmental difficulties had detracted from his attentiveness to his daughter despite her cheerful understanding of how important his work was to him, took charge of Eve's bath and putting her to bed with a story from one of her favourite books of fairy tales, leaving Holmes and I downstairs in the lounge with a cigar (or in Holmes's case, his pipe which he had taken to not smoking around Eve, to my deep approval) and coffee.

Holmes was pensive and morose, staring into space and puffing like a chimney-stack, creating a fog dark enough to gather disapproving looks from the few patrons left in the room at this late hour. We had spoken with Dexter Waspe before supper that evening, and he had corroborated Sage's story that the man had never ridden a horse before. And yet the brute that despised everyone save Calhoun and his daughter, and the horse Holmes was nearly certain was the one belonging to the so-called Headless Horseman, had not held any animosity toward the man.

All in all, I was tired and worried both about Mycroft's work-load and the health of all of us, for this so-called vacation was turning out to be nothing of the kind. Holmes needed the rest, as did I, but apparently he was perfectly content to be pondering a new problem. I should have known better by that point in our association, but that did not stop me from being concerned for his health.

I needed a rest from the thing, however, and so I rose somewhat stiffly, stifling a yawn behind my hand.

"Holmes?"

"Mmph?" He bit the stem of his pipe and cocked his head at me, obviously only half-listening to me, the other part of his mind analyzing either this horseman business or else his brother's disappearing agents…perhaps both.

"I am going to take a short walk," I said, taking my stick from where I had leant it against the wall (I had needed it rather, after our quite active explorations of the afternoon along the beach and surrounding areas). "I'll be back shortly."

He nodded at me with a twitching smile, already more than half-absorbed back into his thoughts, as I left the dining room and strode through the lobby into the cool night air.

The moon glinted off the shrinking puddles left by the rain and cast a silvery glow upon the gardens and paths, and I wandered along one of them in the general vicinity of the woods, feeling the tension of the day slowly start to dissipate as the salt breeze rustled soothingly through the trees and floated about me. I took a deep breath of it and felt the better for the clean fresh air, free of the smog and grime of the city, and felt more like myself after a few minutes of quiet strolling along the sandy path listening to the crickets and the distant lap of waves upon the shore.

After a quarter of an hour, I felt more at ease than I had since the abrupt awakening of the morning and turned back, much refreshed, in the direction of the hotel, which had melted out of sight along the winding path beside the silvery-shadowed treeline.

I thought with a small snort of the superstitious legend and its ghostly, headless rider that was supposed to haunt this area, and wished we had stumbled upon a real mystery rather than a case of over-stimulated imaginative local folklore. Holmes was going to run himself ragged over a problem that obviously held no real satisfactory solution, and…

I stopped abruptly on the path, for through the stillness of the very light breeze I would have sworn I heard hoofbeats.

Ridiculous. Holmes would laugh until he cried if I were to tell him I had imagined such a thing, I thought ruefully. I shook my head and continued along my way for another few moments, heading along the tree-lined path back to the hotel…when from behind me I would have sworn I heard the hoofbeats again. And I was not imagining things.

Thoughts of poachers naturally were the first to enter my mind (not that of ghosts and ghouls and undead horses). Therefore when I saw a dark horse and rider taking shape in the grey glint of moonlight that filtered through the shadows, I emphatically wished I had brought along my revolver.

When the figure trotted into a patch of bright moonlight, and I saw that its rider was without a cranium, I even more emphatically wished I had brought along Sherlock Holmes.


	9. Like a Ghost

"_An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself."_

_Charles Dickens_

**Watson**

The revelation of what I was seeing swept upon me in an instant, and yet I did nothing. How could I? I was staring into the face, or lack thereof, of a non-living, non-breathing ghost.

Any reasoning that it was simply a poacher was dismissed with the fact that the rider of the horse had absolutely no head. There was no mask, no pumpkin to contain an attached cranium, only a noticeable end and a gaping black hole in the neck of the near black armour it wore, tattered cape fluttering behind.

I stared for several moments, and if it could even see, the figure stared back at me. Then the reins were jerked back and the horse reared up, its voice all but shrieking out in the night.

My instincts of combat took over, and I gripped my walking stick firmly, swinging it with every bit of might I possessed towards the horse. It struck it on its muscled chest and splintered, the animal barely seeming to notice, snorting through massive nostrils. Though in the dark I could swear in no court that the animal was Juno, yet the size, colour, and temperament were a dead-on match, and I was forced to fall back to avoid a massive pair of teeth taking a chunk out of my arm.

I fell onto the soft forest floor, the scent of soil and pine needles that was usually calming seeming to add to my terror. I tried to scramble to my feet knowing that I could easily be trampled if I remained there, and yet the rider seemed to make no move towards me.

It appeared to be looking at me, even without eyes, its emotion impossible to determine without features. The great horse reared again and wheeled, galloping further into the dark woods leaving me to haul myself to my feet, quivering from head to toe at the encounter.

I did not spend much time mulling about. Had I been Holmes, or had I listened to that whiney little logical voice in my head that always pipes up when I act emotionally (for some reason, it had never made an appearance before I had moved in with Holmes), I would have swept the scene for clues, even followed the horseman.

Instead I ran, or rather limped, as fast as I could manage, to the hotel, up the stairs (that logical voice protesting as soon as I was up them that the lift would have been easier), and practically fell into our suite, no doubt creating a great deal of noise as I did so. I was more concerned with catching the breath running wild and ragged in my heaving chest than preserving the peace and quiet, however.

The fact that I had made a clamorous entrance was confirmed when the doors began to open, first Eve in her lacy nightgown rubbing her eyes, Bunny in her arms. Next was Holmes, still in shirt and trousers, and finally Mycroft in his dressing grown, expression of annoyance shifting to questioning in an instant.

Holmes, having advantages in both agility and stride length, made it to me first and guided me to the sofa. "Watson, what on earth…! Were you attacked?"

"Yes. Well, no. I…" It was a good question; had I been? The rider had not lifted a finger to bring harm to me, but all the same he hardly came bearing a white flag of friendship. What was I saying? The creature had been _headless_! "Holmes, I saw… I…" I simply could not seem to form proper words.

My girl was at my knee now, scrambling up to sit beside me on the couch, eyes wide with concern. When I glanced upon her, she quickly gave a reassuring smile, pushing Bunny into my hands for some comfort.

"Thank you." I took a deep breath, tilting my head to meet Holmes's eyes. "I saw the horseman, Holmes."

My friend was silent, holding up a hand to silence Mycroft's initial sputtering protests. He knelt down before me, pale hand over my own, never once breaking eye contact with me. He inhaled deeply before speaking.

"Well, he doesn't _appear _to be intoxicated…"

"I am not drunk!" I practically exploded, my raw nerves trodden upon by Holmes's naturally clumsy emotional feet. "I wasn't out of your company long enough to get myself drunk! I went for a stroll through the woods and out of nowhere there was this… thing… on this… horse, and… and…" I believed I was experiencing the frustration Eve did when words simply could not be put onto paper. Sometimes emotions simply could not be put into coherent words.

"Watson, dear fellow…" Holmes was gentler now, seeing the outcome of his emotionless deducing and, unlike his clients, caring about my reaction to it. "There was no offence meant. Now where did you see this figure?"

"Up the path, where we took Eve several days ago. I'm not quite sure how far… Fifteen minutes? Perhaps twenty? At my pace, so not very deep…" I took a shaking breath, staring at my hands so I would not meet the three intense gazes set upon me. "It was headless, Holmes. I would swear on the original Guttenberg bible that it was."

"I know, dear fellow. I know." Holmes was only saying this to humour me, I knew that much, but at least it was said in a sympathetic tone. "I'm going out to have a look while the scene is still fresh and uncontaminated. I suggest you rest, my friend, before you faint outright."

I nodded weakly, rising and trudging to my bed while the Holmes brothers discussed in hushed and hissing tones as they shooed Eve off to her room. I changed, wrapping myself up in my dressing gown to ward off the chill I knew was not from the temperature, settling under the sheets but not finding rest. I heard Holmes leave and Mycroft plod back to bed, and then the opening of the furthest door and the barest pattering footsteps.

My door swung open and I sighed as the tiny figure scrambled up into my bed and dug under the covers. I rested my hand on her head. "It's alright, Eve. There's nothing to be afraid of."

I could feel her head nodding. Her communication was rather limited in the dark. She clung to me, taking one of my palms and tracing a heart into it.

Dear god, was this truly the same child I had taken into my arms only a calendar ago, starving and sore and beaten? Without reliable means of lettings her emotions be known, without any idea what it was like to be wanted and to live without pain. Now all that remained from that life was her name and her scars. The name did not seem to bother her; she chose to keep it, after all.

Her scars were harder, she'd cried after her first dance lesson after changing with the other little aspiring ballerinas and realizing that not everyone had such markings, but she seemed to see them as shallow reminders now, not pleasant but bearable.

Another sigh, a bit more content this time as I repeated the shape on her forehead before kissing it. "Let's try to sleep and leave the worrying to Holmes, hmm?"

This garnered a nod and a yawn, and eventually the pair of us drifted off.

**Holmes**

**I locked the suite's door behind me as I ventured out, though I was confident in the safety of those within. Mycroft would have his pistol nearby; if he did not bring it from the start, when the Whitehall troubles began he would have requested Trevor bring it. Still, one could not be too careful…**

**Did I believe there was a headless horseman? Or course not. And yet I do not believe Watson was lying. A man is only lying when he claims something he knows is not true. Watson seemed utterly convinced he had been confronted by a man without a head, and I intended to uncover why he had thought he had seen such a thing.**

"**A bit late to be roaming the hallways, Master Holmes," spoke a voice that made me spin on my heel and regret my lack of a weapon, only to see the rash of red hair and the grin that both belonged to the owner of the hotel.**

"**I might say the same for you, Calhoun," I responded, a bit more coldly than I intended as my eyes scanned him. Not out of breath, no dirt on him… His hands were wet, however…**

"**A couple on the third floor was having a bit of trouble with the pipes. Blasted technology, water basins never leaked an eighth as much as pipes. I took care of it myself; you learn a lot of working knowledge managing a building like this, and it beats getting a caretaker mad at you for waking him. And yourself?"**

**There was little use in lying to him; there was no way he could show no signs of horseback riding so aggressively as a ghost so quickly. "Dr. Watson was walking through the woods and saw something… off."**

**The Scot gave a growl. "If it's those blasted racoons again…"**

**I blinked. "Racoons?"**

"**Ye know, racoons. Striped tail, wee mask, dexterous little buggers."**

"**I know what a racoon is, but they've hardly native to his continent."**

"**That's why it's so off. I was hoping that George chap would pick the last of them out with his dogs, but I might have to hire a professional…"**

**I could still not rule out the possibility that Calhoun was in on this in-progress disaster even if he himself was not the rider, after all his past crimes were much worse than frightening some tourists, but all the same I decided to reveal true intentions; having the help and consent of the property owner could save jail time, I'd learned in my line of work. "He saw a horseman."**

**This grew a louder groan than the possibility of racoons had. "Let me take a guess, this one happened to be missing his head? Honestly, hitting the bottle so hard, you wouldn't think that of a man like the doctor."**

"**That's the thing, Mr. Calhoun, Dr. Watson rarely drinks heavily, and he was not intoxicated tonight, I will personally vouch for that. I was with him not half of an hour before he saw the figure, and he was rather startled but not off-kilter when he returned." This was not based on friendship but rather evidence. God knows Watson had been limping before, leaving no chance of hiding a drunken tilt, not to mention his speech had been free of slur and his person absent of the telltale scent of alcohol.**

"**If that's what you say, then I'm obliged to believe you," the Scot relented without much pressure. At what must have been a questioning look, he expanded with "The doctor is your closest friend, Mr. Holmes, and I don't see him as the type that needs a false alibi, nor the kind of bloke to keep up such a lame-duck prank as a headless horseman, if your brother is any indication of your sense of humour."**

**This I could not retrain a chuckle at, and the thought of Mycroft tolerating a joke let another a full-blown prank nearly made me laugh out loud. "I hope I am a bit more lose in humour than he, but the supernatural I have little patience for, sir."**

"**Good lad. Cynicism serves a person well when used in the proper place. What do you say we grab a lantern and have a poke around? I'll likely be useless, but after all the elder Mr. Holmes has said about your methods, I'd rather a live demonstration than reading though back issues of magazines."**

**He was offering to help me investigate; either he was not guilty or he was clumsily trying to cover up guilt. Being an expert at lying and concealing crime being a past speciality of his, I was liable to bet on the former. "Come, then, and thank you."**

**We ventured out into the night, taking a lantern from one of the servants before we made it far. Even with the dim yellow light preceding our steps, the lack of visibility made me almost nervous. No one had been purposely harmed so far, that much was true, yet experience had taught me never to let my guard down and as far as I knew, neither of us was carrying a pistol.**

"**I don't see much out of the ordinary," the hotel owner finally spoke up after a time of trekking in silence. "These trails were well-worn riding trails when I bought the estate, one of the perks of it. People use them for walking, some of them lead to some picnic sites or natural landmarks… Beautiful waterfall back here, some rare fungus apparently though that's not my bag. And the soil's fairly dry by now, hoof prints would be hard to come by let alone identify."**

**I made a noise of agreement as I panned the lantern over the area. It was nothing to say the path had been used, it was common to see people, on foot or on horseback, going to and from them. Yet I looked for excessive broken branches on the sides, as the horseman's mount was said to be larger than most. "How often would you say you ride Juno?"**

**Though I could not make out his face very clearly, I can guess that he was surprised. "Juno? Not as often as I like to, I've been training other horses for the guests to ride, and I've given up on taming him to other people. But at the very least twice a week, and I lead him about the lot every day so he can stretch his legs. Why do you ask?"**

"**The horse used in the appearances is consistently describes as very large and black, and Watson and I found a hoof print of an abnormal size in the woods after the first incident. Juno would fit snugly into it, I believe."**

**Calhoun only gave a snort. "Holmes, you've met that animal, and you know how foul-tempered he is to man and beast alike save for myself and my youngest girl."**

**Though curiosity about what kind of family this man would have produced poked at me, I ignored it. "That Sage fellow was permitted to pat its snout without so much as a feinting nip. It stands to reason others might have gained its favour. Or Sage is…"**

"**A lost cause to the equestrian world," the redhead finished for me. "I gave him a quick riding lesson the other day and he seemed confident enough until I told him he was putting the saddle on backwards. He eventually couldn't sit still enough in the saddle for two laps around the paddock and he gave up, as was sensible to do considering Miss Eve surpasses him in horse sense."**

**From my experience with the man, Eve had more sense than him in many categories, but still, it was absurd to say a man who was consistently vouched for as a terrible fellow in the saddle could be more frightening than comical riding about in the dark. Another thought occurred. "Did you buy Juno as a foal? From nearby? The area is known for Percherons. Perhaps one of his siblings is the culprit."**

"**I didn't get him as a foal, but he is local," he admitted, a thoughtful tone in his voice. "Can't recall the merchant's name, but I would have it written down in my ledgers, and I likely kept his information, he had good animals."**

**A possible lead; no doubt the merchant would keep track of who bought his horses. Had I been thinking clearly, I might have checked the stable for Juno before we set out, but then he did seem like a nasty beast, and I wager even one he was friendly to would not chance to ride him for fear of a snapped neck, but if he was an aggressive exception to his breed, perhaps another was his stand-in. **

**The calls of Calhoun, having ventured a ways in front of me, shook me from my thought and speculation. "Lad! Holmes! You may wish to see this, boy!" I saw the glint of something in his hand, and when I caught up with him and shone the lantern upon it, it turned out to be a British coin, a halfpenny with the usual trident-bearing figure on one side and on the other, the portrait of Queen Victoria scratched badly, almost beyond recognition.**

**I took it, turning it over in my palm. "This was done intentionally."**

"**Aye." I had been about Calhoun, mostly when he was assisting my brother with cases and diplomatic matters, and I had come to pick out a certain tone he had, almost reminiscing but more distaste at his past actions, when he spoke of his origins in the underbelly of crime. "Non-English groups, a lot of them, used this as a way to display themselves to one another. A criminal would notice it, an ordinary person would pay it little to no mind."**

**Perhaps this was beyond a juvenile prank… Perhaps this was far deeper than I could estimate. "Your old group, Calhoun?" I could not help but sound a bit bitter, I had never fully appreciated Mycroft for keeping a character like him around. No matter if he swore reform in both word and action. Criminals always went back to what they knew.**

"**I doubt it. No one knew my true name then, and no one knows it now. They could not have traced me here, anyway. And it's been far too long, my old grudges are all settled." I could hear the gears in his mind clink and whir. He was no idiot; Trevor had been there more frequently, my brother had been on the edge and apart from the rest of us, all obvious signs. "More likely someone after Mycroft."**


	10. Keeping Silence

_"There is no reply to the ignorant like keeping silence" - Turkish proverb_

**Holmes**

Mycroft's vociferous snoring was enough to rattle the hall-mirror by the time I returned to our suite. I paused briefly to see if my friend had managed to fall asleep in his disturbed state, but I found he was peaceful and still, Eve curled up next to him with one hand clinging to his dressing-gown's lapel. Smiling, I silently closed the door and took myself off to bed soon after.

The next morning appeared bright and clear, the sky a deep blue dotted with almost unrealistically white, puffy clouds set at perfect intervals throughout. Mycroft's reaction to seeing the coin Calhoun had found was considerably less sunny. Brother mine is the most unflappable man alive, but even I should be a bit on edge were factors beginning to add up to the sum of trouble in my department, especially business that concerned me personally.

We were discussing the possibility of his returning to London, and more importantly being safe in doing so, when Watson's door opened a crack and Eve slipped out, rubbing her eyes with Bunny's head, who was clutched in the hand that was not shutting the door behind her.

Mycroft hastily erased the worry lines in his forehead (for she would have caught them and never been satisfied until she learned what was wrong) as she hugged him good-morning.

I was about to tap on the door and tell Watson of my findings when a whirl of nightdress and squirming child suddenly twined around my legs. A dark glare met my own eyes, and she laid a finger to her lips, pointing.

"Oh…" He was still asleep, then. Good; as he was a light sleeper usually, if we had not yet woken him then it indicated he needed the rest. "Yes, of course, my dear, I shan't wake him just yet." I smiled as the girl beamed up at me, for it never ceased to please her that I could understand her lack of communication the best of the three of us; it saved both time and frustration for us all.

"Eve, run along and wash and pick out a frock for today," Mycroft spoke up, kindly but in a tone that brooked no argument, a sign that his mind was too full of theories and suspicions to have room for frivolities.

Our daughter nodded cheerfully but stopped in the doorway to look at both of us, her little mouth pursed in a gesture of thought.

"Mm…something very light, but you'll want a jacket as well," I replied in answer to the silent question. "You were wanting to have a look at those ships the resort keeps for us, were you not? And it will be windy out on the water despite the sunshine."

I received a brilliant smile that warmed the room more than the slanting sunbeam on the carpeting before the child vanished into the bedroom. When the door had safely closed behind her, I turned back to Mycroft. My elder sibling had resumed his facial resemblance of a pensive block of granite.

"Mycroft, I doubt that you would be any safer in London than you are here," I emphasized with a force that was, though I might not admit such to him nor would he acknowledge its truth if I did, quite heartfelt. "With no offence meant to your department, I would not think any of your employees are better at keeping guard over your safety or at discovering who is behind the twisted business, than I."

"You always were extraordinarily humble, Sherlock." I snorted as he folded his handkerchief, matching the corners precisely, to replace in his pocket for the day. "Not for those reasons, but for the fact that I should prefer the business to stay out of Whitehall and be focused upon me rather than on the entire department, I agree with you. However, I believe we both concur that it would not be prudent for me to devote my time to anything other than resolving the issue at hand. You shall have to do the legwork, which is as well since I have not the energy anyway to continually occupy your infinitesimal attention span."

"Agreed." I ignored the sleight upon my character and looked up as a drawer closed in Watson's bedroom. "Calhoun will of course furnish you with a list of the resort guests not native to England? That is the logical place to find the man – or woman – who dropped the coin."

"I shall ask him after breakfast. But Sherlock, I do not want you dragging Eve around on a criminal investigation," he warned, his face creased with a new worry wrinkle. "There is a very real underlying current of danger here, despite the fact that this faction, whoever they may be, has not yet aggressively attacked anyone."

I sighed and flipped the defaced coin aimlessly into the air, catching it before it struck the ground; we had had this argument ad nauseum already in just this first year of our parenthood. "You truly want her staying with you while you do paperwork for Whitehall, send telegrams to Trevor, and generally just wait to be shot at?"

I had put a toe over the invisible line, evidently, for the death-glare I was presented with was of such acerbity that I was thoroughly relieved when behind me Watson emerged slowly from his bedroom. He was smartly dressed as usual, and bore no signs of the previous evening's events other than the fact that he looked highly embarrassed, as if he would rather not have to face either of us. It is not often that my Watson will not look me in the eye for any length of time.

"Good morning, Doctor," my brother tossed over his shoulder as he regarded his appearance in the hall mirror (naturally he was wasting no time in going down for his meal). "Sherlock, bring Eve down with you, and mind she remembers a hat. I shall have that list of guests awaiting you with your coffee."

I waved in my brother's general direction as he left the suite, and wondered if he was being uncharacteristically tactful in leaving or if he merely wanted his breakfast that badly. Probably the latter, but it was of no importance. I turned to see Watson silently peering out the window at the pink-gold sun being reflected off the ocean, turning it a warm blue in the early light.

"Tell me, Watson, what do you make of this?" I did not immediately bring up the topic of the purportedly headless horseman, for which he was obviously grateful. He took the object readily enough and examined it on both sides, accepting my lens when I offered its use.

"The scratching is far too deep to be accidental," he suggested, half-heartedly shrugging off any further observations.

"Exactly, Doctor. These coins are used by non-native criminal groups, as an identification signal. Foreign affairs are, of course, my brother's métier – and therefore this coin, being found at the place where you saw that horseman, bespeaks of some deeper intrigue than we have thought until now. Whatever, or whomever, you saw last night, Doctor, it was more than a simple trickster wreaking havoc upon this neighbourhood."

His head shot up to look at me in astonishment. "Then you do believe me."

"Of course I believe you, Watson!" I exclaimed, slightly distressed that he would think otherwise but understanding how deeply his nerves had been rattled last night. "And that the figure appeared to you to be sans a cranium, I have no doubt. However, my dear chap, you will agree with me that we should seek different possibilities regarding its appearance before falling back upon the first candid observation and accepting the supernatural, correct?"

Watson smiled, for the first time since he had appeared. "Quite correct, Holmes. I admit in the light of this beautiful morning it all seems rather…silly."

"It would not seem so, to either of us, had you fallen and broken your leg as that poor stablehand," I answered pointedly. "But I do not believe you or I or the people in this resort are the target, not if this tell-tale coin's presence here is any indication."

"Mycroft." It was a statement, not a question, and accompanied by a worried frown.

"That is the most likely hypothesis at the moment. And now, my dear fellow, if you would fetch our little girl and come along, for we have much work to do. Oh, and Watson?"

He paused in the act of tapping lightly on Eve's door. "Yes?"

"I trust you will not be offended if I suggest we keep last night's incident a private matter? While I have no doubt of your sanity, sobriety, or your word, not every man who hears the colourful tale might," I suggested, and saw him nod once in mortification. "And," I then continued, in deadly sincerity, "I should hate to ruin one of my best summer suits by being forced to make someone recant his opinion of your strength of mind or character."  
****

Watson

When Holmes had said "much work to do," I did not realize just how much until over breakfast we received a dauntingly long list of foreign guests. We decided to split forces to cover more ground, I taking the first three guests on the list and Holmes going after the last three. The one remaining, Mycroft himself, quite surprisingly, volunteered to talk to, for he was going to take Eve out front to play with the other children. Calhoun informed us the last name on the list was a young woman who also had a small child and was out in the gardens nearly every morning just after breakfast.

We regrouped at luncheon to compare notes, what little there was of them.

After stating that his talk with the young Frenchwoman could be written off completely as the lady did not have enough brains to be a menace, the elder Holmes alternated between morosely consuming his luncheon and watching Eve pick at her sandwich, his watery eyes filled with concern and a bit of well-placed anger that I felt as well. Apparently our little one's morning had not gone pleasantly, for one unfortunate fact of childhood is a marked lack of understanding when one is different from others, especially in as noticeable a way as being bereft of speech, and their shunning of her was not a matter their parents saw the need to correct.

Our Eve was resilient and always had been, and Mycroft told Holmes and me quite proudly that she appeared to have taken the exclusion and the rudeness in stride, content to sit beside him the rest of the morning and sketch different objects in the garden; but now she appeared slightly depressed and indeed lonely, and much of Holmes's time at the table was spent in trying to cheer her up by any and all means possible (several of which were highly inappropriate, causing his older sibling no amount of embarrassment and gifting onlookers a free floor-show).

Just at present, I was trying to ignore the fact that Holmes and Eve were apparently sketching me, in a very unflattering caricature that was causing undue snickering from Holmes, and beginning to tell Mycroft of the only remotely suspicious man I had met out of my three.

"He's a German by birth, though he speaks English flawlessly," I reported, glancing over the scanty notes I had scribbled in my pocket-notebook. "Name, Gerhard Braun, light hair and colouring. About six-foot-three, very broad-shouldered, large hands, enormously strong,. He was single-handedly moving a packing-crate that was nearly as tall as I when I found him."

Holmes flicked an eyelash at me to let me know he was still listening despite his intent scribbling, and his elder brother did me the courtesy of telling me to continue.

"Apparently he is a new guest, only arrived yesterday morning." I glanced down to consult my notes. "He caught my attention first off, because he was wearing a large-brimmed hat that covered the upper half of his face – wearing it indoors, while he was moving that case into his rooms."

"Did he have some reason to hide his features?" Holmes interjected, his hand pausing over the drawing's nose with pencil poised.

I nodded, repressing a shudder at the remembrance of the first glimpse I had of the man. "He evidently was mauled by a large dog when he was a lad, Holmes, or at least that is what he told me. Severe tissue damage has left permanent scars on the left side of his face and neck and has damaged the eyesight in that eye. He is lucky, from what I could observe, that he can see out of it at all."

Eve's own little eyes were as round as her plate, and her mouth squiggled into horrified, sad line. Holmes patted her hand in comfort and, slyly grinning at me, added a ridiculous handlebar moustache to their horrible drawing, eliciting a giggle from his small protégé. "Do you believe his story?"

I frowned, thinking back to the encounter. "If he was lying, he was doing it extremely well," I admitted, somewhat abashed that I could not deduce more from the brief conversation. "The story he told me matched the injuries, and he seemed genuinely grateful that I was talking to him at all – I got the feeling that he receives rude receptions as a general rule and was appreciative I ignored the disfiguration to talk to him. Frankly it was rather pleasant conversation."

Holmes frowned darkly, though not at me in particular. "That story is also a perfect way to gather sympathy and credibility from kind-hearted people such as yourself, Watson," he retorted pointedly. "No one is above suspicion, no matter how good-natured he may appear."

I was completely unoffended by his innate cynicism and merely nodded, returning to my soup, smiling despite myself to see that he had succeeded in getting Eve to laugh silently at their awful sketch.

"Here, my dear, you must finish shading this in now," he said solemnly, and then grinned at the girl's enthusiasm before looking up at us. "I can only confess to having even less luck than you, Doctor," he sighed, finishing his tea and waving the waiter over for another cup. "The only person of any interest on that list was a rather intriguing woman named Ingrid Olsson. I ran into Mr. George out on the path, walking his hounds after breakfast, and he told me where to find the lady as well as the very interesting fact that she rarely emerges from her rooms other than in the evening or night hours."

Mycroft had finished his meal and was giving his brother a piercing look that signified his full attention. "Go on, Sherlock. While it is unusual, it is hardly grounds to suspect her of more than unsociability. You did the same thing as an adolescent. You had half the neighbours in your own age group convinced you were a vampire."

"My thoughts exactly, brother dear," Holmes sniffed injuriously, glaring at his sibling before I could exploit the opportunity to learn more about my friend's strange childhood. "Her appearance even furthered that opinion, for she is small and soft-spoken, rather unimaginative in appearance. No points of interest at first glance. However," he continued, diving into his pocket for a small volume he had evidently taken from the hotel's library and then handing the book over to me, "after a few minutes I remembered why her name seemed familiar to me."

Mycroft glanced at the volume as I placed it upon the table, and Holmes wriggled in his seat with a short laugh of triumph. "Yes, the same – she is a quite prolific scientific author in the fields of vegetation. Her series of books upon different types of rare fungi and molds were extremely valuable to me in my early days of learning to recognise obscure plant life, and with that common ground I was able to elicit more information from the lady than I had thought I might."

Eve raised a skeptical eyebrow, and I eyed the book with a wry smile, for Holmes was positively glowing about its merits. I would stick to "florid romantic fiction," thank you very much, and it appeared she was of the same opinion. Holmes did not notice the eye-roll she sent his direction, so enthralled was he with his fungus.

"We discussed at length the rare vegetation Calhoun informed me grows back in these woods," Holmes prattled on, checking off points upon his fingers and narrowly avoiding putting his elbow straight down into Eve's half-eaten sandwich. "The lady has been through these grounds many times in research for her newest publication, which she is writing here at this resort. Hence the emergence in the evening hours. And she did say she has seen signs in many places that there has been activity, human activity, deep within those trees and well away from the beaten path."

"She is here to write a new book, then?" I asked, finishing off my soup and setting down the spoon.

"So she said," Holmes alleged, tapping a finger upon his lips in thought. "She also told me that she is here to recover after the recent death of her husband, but that might also be a ploy for sympathy and to divert suspicion."

"Or it might be llegitimate grief, and I hope you behaved accordingly," I retorted severely.

Mycroft stifled a brotherly chuckle into his water glass as Holmes's ears reddened. "Of course I did, Doctor," he muttered, abashed. "Besides, she was dressed accordingly and her wedding ring was still in evidence. Those as well as other minute details with which I shan't bore you all seem to indicate that she is telling the truth, but again we cannot rule her out of the list of suspects."

"What list of suspects?" Mycroft demanded. "We have no real suspects, and you know it, Sherlock. Perhaps you are simply trying to find trouble where there is none."

It was a hollow suggestion; none of us including our concerned little girl was fooled, and so Holmes gracefully steered the conversation into less frustrating channels, meaning what the afternoon was going to entail.

Mycroft was still sorting paperwork and would be for some time, and Eve had been cooped up in his sight all the morning, so it was with great enthusiasm I agreed with Holmes that we needed to spend a restful afternoon along the beach.

Though at first I held misgivings about taking our girl aboard one of the large sailing vessels she seemed to be so fascinated with, Holmes was his usual insistent self and absolutely no help to my understandable caution. I stood not a chance against those two particular sets of pleading eyes, and so it was that an hour later we found ourselves moving smoothly through the sparkling blue water, the breeze whipping about and making our eyes burn slightly. The gulls' screaming beginning to fade behind us as we glided along, melting into a smooth silence broken only by laughter and quiet talk along the ship's deck.

Seeing that Eve was nearly glowing with excitement, looking over the rail at the foaming white wake we left behind (Holmes had waved off my concern but still hovered near her to ensure she did not lean too far over the side), I also began to relax, forgetting about the events of the previous night that had so rattled me.

We were not the only holidayers taking advantage of the sailing trip; I recognised a young family from down the hall on the floor that held our suite, as well as a couple of young ladies who were strolling along the rail, twirling their parasols. The Sage fellow we had met before appeared from somewhere, accosted Holmes, and launched into an animated private conversation, with which Holmes was obviously growing quite bored; he is never as good at hiding his exasperation with people as he believes he is.

Perceiving me looking at him in amusement, Eve shot me a wide grin and slid along the rail in my direction, pointing eagerly at a floating piece of seaweed that bobbed lazily alongside and then disappeared in the boat's wake.

I smiled and asked what she liked best about the ship, and watched attentively as she pointed at the billowing sails over our heads, then blew lightly against her hand and moved it back and forth.

"The sounds of the sails in the wind?" I asked tentatively, not being as good at understanding her sign-language as Holmes, and I was rewarded with a bright smile and a small hand stealing into mine. And I realised the breeze and the peaceful atmosphere as well as the affection of a child were doing more than any prescription ever could to relieve tension.

Said relaxation quite abruptly shattered, however, when I perceived Mr. George strolling our direction, with one of his enormous wolfhounds prancing along in front of him on a long lead.

I was about to scoop my daughter up into my arms but thankfully did not have to, as the poor fellow saw us before Eve saw them and firmly tugged on the lead, tipping his hat to me in apology before scooting the dog the other direction, away from us. Why he would bring the beast on board a pleasure vessel was beyond me, unless he truly cared for the brutes that much. I should have to keep an eye upon him and the monstrous dog, for Eve's pleasant trip would most definitely turn into a nightmare should the thing break loose at any time.

Holmes suddenly appeared at my elbow, blowing out a whistling sigh of immense irritation. "That fellow is beginning to annoy me, Watson," he muttered in an undertone as Sage walked toward the aft of the ship.

"In what way, Holmes?"

"He told me that he has been doing some investigation on his own," he answered dryly.

"Indeed." I brushed a droplet of water from my neck, where it had landed after a small wave had slapped the side of the ship below.

"He says that he has seen people about the resort at odd hours, people he does not believe are guests." His brow furrowing in thought, the detective automatically reached into his pocket for a cigarette and then froze when I glared disapprovingly at him and Eve tittered noiselessly. "I am inclined to dismiss his observations," he continued as if nothing had happened, folding his arms with a disgruntled sniff, "merely because he is trying far too hard to be helpful."

"Do you have any idea how cynical you have been today regarding every person you have met?" I posed the question, quite seriously. He winced, and I then realized it was not his boredom that was prompting this complete mistrust of humanity, but rather worry over his brother. "Sorry, old man…I was not thinking," I murmured, downcast.

He shook his head, clapping me lightly on the shoulder. "No, no, my dear fellow; I am just attempting to make sense of the whole affair. I will admit to being a bit on edge from – what the devil is going on?" This last was a near-shout, as a woman's scream pierced the peaceful air from somewhere up ahead, followed by raised voices, the booming barks of that enormous dog, and various eerie noises that did not at all sound like the workings of a smoothly-run sailing vessel.

Eve's eyes widened, and she wrapped her other hand around mine, holding it in both for physical comfort and looking to Holmes in turn for mental reassurance.

"Stay here," Holmes commanded quietly, and disappeared into the gathering crowd.

"I'm sure it's all right, Eve," I said soothingly, patting her head with my free hand and then kneeling down to be on her own eye level. "Nothing to worry about, my dear. Now, what would you like to do when we get back to the resort? Another riding lesson, perhaps, on one of Mr. Calhoun's lovely ponies?"

Our smart daughter was not to be taken in by my distraction, but she did make the effort to nod at my suggestion, flashing me a tiny smile.

As footsteps approached rapidly and then stopped beside me, a hand came down on my shoulder and I stood to my feet. Holmes's face was calm and betraying no sign of distress, but I who knew him better than he knew himself could see in his uneasy eyes that the mask was in place for Eve's sake, not mine.

"What is it?" I demanded.

He massaged the bridge of his nose for a moment as if in pain, and then looked at me over his fingers. "The ship's hull has broken, do not ask me how," he said flatly. "And…" He glanced down at Eve, who was at the moment thankfully distracted by a woman's very flashy pink parasol glittering in the sunlight, then continued in a quieter tone. "And we are taking on water rather rapidly, Watson."


End file.
